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Melinda Stone, assistant professor of media studies (left), at a drive-in in San Luis Obispo where she brought her “California Tour” film series.
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Celebrating California at the Drive-In
Melinda Stone, assistant professor of media studies, is celebrating California film and culture and it’s coming to a drive-in near you.
Stone is touring drive-ins statewide with an iconoclastic program of bingo games, sing-alongs, and a selection of short films by San Francisco filmmakers. Called “The California Tour,” the campaign has made stops at six California semi-rural towns where drive-ins still exist, in an effort to both use an outdoor venue and help expose people to cutting-edge art.
Stone, who has worked for the last five years bringing film festivals to neglected or abandoned outdoor venues, such as Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, spent a year preparing for the tour. With expense money from USF and a grant from San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Stone commissioned or rented nine short films about California landscape and life, from bloodless bullfights in the Central Valley to Stone’s own film about abandoned cemeteries around the state.
“One of my passions is land use and most of these drive-ins are dying because of the cost of the land,” Stone said. “I wanted to go to these drive-ins that are still existing just to use them for this exciting event.”
Stone launched her tour in July in Crescent City and will end the tour at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center on Oct. 25.
Once at the drive-in, Stone encourages her audience to get out of their cars and have a picnic dinner. The group sings verses from “This Land is Your Land” and plays bingo before the movies are shown.
Stone has met with positive, and some negative, feedback. At the Fair Oaks drive-in near Sacramento, Stone had a packed audience and people cheered. In Armona, in the Central Valley, only 15 cars came and the event was heckled.
“We take chances bringing these films to these communities,” Stone said. “When Freddy vs. Jason is playing on the nights before and after our films are shown, it’s a problem of expectations.”
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