About the film

Salton Sea in the southern California desert. In the 1950s and ’60s, this 385-square-mile body of water, created in 1905 when the rampaging Colorado River spilled over its banks, became a celebrity magnet and tourist destination. But its vogue quickly faded. What’s left of the resort is the subject of Alma Har’el’s surreal documentary, “Bombay Beach”, named after a decrepit semi-ghost town at the water’s edge, where dead fish wash up on the sand, and the ruins rust in the sun. Its hardy residents fewer than 300, eke out a marginal existence in a place that suggests a crumbling, junk-strewn trailer park. Exploring this desiccated community of outsiders, Ms. Har’el discovers beauty and some measure of hope. There is hardly a shot in this visually captivating movie that doesn’t convey a profound desolation, as if the camera were surveying a sweltering wasteland and its survivors in the aftermath of a cataclysm, but it is draped in a sunset glow. The movie interweaves portraits of three male residents of different ages. The soundtrack gives this old coot a musical alter ego in the dry-as-desert voice of the young Bob Dylan singing “Moonshiner”. The soundtrack, by Beirut and Mr. Dylan, offers sidelong commentary on the people and the ambience of the place. The film’s most plaintive figure is Benny Parrish, a grade schooler who was separated from his parents in 2002 when he was 3 weeks old and they were arrested on suspicion of terrorism and served two years in prison. His father, who stockpiled munitions in the backyard, insists that he was not building a militia; his bombing range was just a grown-up playground. The portraits segue in and out of informally choreographed segments in which the subjects act out Ms. Har’el’s fantasies of their inner lives. These magic realist blips, which quickly dissolve, evoke the buoyant inner lives of people living off the grid. With plenty of reasons for despair, they find joy and a sense of community.

Wybrane festiwal i nagrody/ Selected festivals and awards: 2010 - MFF Berlinale/Berlinale IFF, 2010 - FF Tribeca NY, Nagroda dla Filmu Dokumentalnego/Tribeca NY, Documentary Film Award