Laguna Beach filmmaker Greg McGillivray peers through his old 16-mm Bolex (Photo by Don Leach).

A jumble of vintage cameras and other cinematic treasures that date to the magical beginnings of moving images fills Greg MacGillivray’s upstairs corner office.

Next to a staircase in the hallway to his office at the MacGillivray Freeman Films company is a row of cameras, more modern and personal ones that have defined the stages in the Laguna Beach filmmaker’s life and long career.

There is his first camera, a Kodak, which MacGillivray acquired at age 10, along with the 8-millimeter camera he used to make his first films during his days as a teenager growing up in Corona del Mar and surfing at Big Corona. And, of course, there’s the 16-millimeter Bolex. He and his late buddy and business partner, Jim Freeman, used it to make “Five Summer Stories,” a cult classic among the surfing set, and other surfing films in the 1960s and 70s.

Freeman died in a helicopter crash in 1976, but MacGillivray went onto become a filmmaker known for his mastery of bulkier cameras that make films in the high-resolution IMAX documentary format.

On Friday, MacGillivray, now 66, will reach another highway mile marker in his career with the release of “To The Arctic,” the first film in an ambitious campaign to make 20 IMAX films in as many years.

… Continue reading O.C. filmmaker trains his lens on ambitious goal 

Kings of Road Kill: Band leaders Randy Cochran, second from left (with bass), and Darren Ellis, second from right (with guitar)

The idea came to Darren Ellis, front man for the Road Kill Kings, during a recent trip with his daughter to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.

“I thought ‘how cool would it be to do our own version of the Grand Ole Opry?’” the Huntington Beach resident recalled, when pressed to tell the story of how the Hula Hayride came about.

His band’s website describes the Road Kill Kings as an Americana group. Its five members came together out of their love of country, bluegrass and rockabilly music — all “with a dash of rock ‘n’ roll thrown in for drinkability,” the band’s online bio noted. The Road Kill Kings have played gigs at Mother’s Tavern in Sunset Beach, the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and elsewhere in Orange County.

Since his trip to Tennessee in December, Ellis has combined his love of country music with his fondness for the “Prairie Home Companion” broadcasts on National Public Radio and his reverence for the bygone Louisiana Hayride — which launched Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams to musical stardom — in creating a new local musical endeavor, he said.

Ellis and the band’s bass player, Randy Cochran, along with Christopher Burkhardt, a Costa Mesa resident who isn’t in the band, have now started the so-called “Hula Hayride.” This dinner time entertainment program for a good cause blends elements of an old-fashioned radio variety show with Americana or Roots music against the Hawaiian backdrop of a tiki ballroom.

… Continue Reading: Hula Hayride rolls again Thursday night

Members of the H.B. Symphony Orchestra’s woodwind section perform in a concert. (Courtesy of H.B. Symphony Orchestra)

One note at a time, the Huntington Beach Symphony Orchestra has picked up tempo in its three years of existence.

The HBSO took root in Surf City’s rich communal soil in February 2009 with a modest goal of performing two concerts that initial year.

Gradually, the home-grown orchestra raised its level of ambition to four concerts during the year, which it can now perform. In the coming years, the orchestra hopes to be capable of playing five or six per season in coming years, said Grant Sevdayan, its music director and conductor.

While most of the HBSO’s musicians are professionals, one third are volunteers. These include doctors, lawyers and other professionals moonlighting for the orchestra simply because they love classical music.

“Without good community ties, the orchestra doesn’t make any sense,” said Sevdayan, whose day job is to serve as choir director and organist at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church on Talbert Avenue near Beach Boulevard.

“… There is a great need for good music and good music promotion in Huntington Beach, so our kids don’t end up listening to Lady Gaga,” he added.

… Continue reading A communal love of fine music

Artist Elizabeth Turk, one of the three winners of the 2012 Helena Modjeska Award, was a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. Her studio is in Santa Ana. (Courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)

Gloria Zigner, Douglas Rankin and Elizabeth Turk move in different worlds but have, in their own ways, made a mark on the Orange County arts scene.

Come September, all three will be recognized at the 13th annual O.C. Arts Awards in Costa Mesa as recipients of the Helena Modjeska Award, a lifetime achievement handed out by Santa Ana-based nonprofit Arts Orange County, the ceremony’s host whose mission is to promote the arts countywide.

“It is our premier award,” said Richard Stein, Arts O.C. executive director.

The ceremony will be at the Samueli Theatre on Sept. 18. The Modjeska Award recognizes an extraordinary contribution to arts and culture demonstrated during one’s life by a leader, artist, educator or philanthropist, Stein said.

… Continue Reading Three to receive county arts honor

Photographer Tom Lamb talks about “Tustin One,” the photograph above, and what it takes to capture the unusual perspectives he photographes of flat landscapes while looking down from a flying helicopter. Lamb’s show, “Marks on the Land – The View from Here,” opened at the OC Great Park Gallery on March 24. (Photo by Don Leach)

Tom Lamb could never have taken his pictures of a changing patch of Orange County at ground level.

From his vantage point riding in helicopters airborne and tilted at varying angles above the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and surrounding areas — and through his lens and artistically trained eye — the Laguna Beach photographer gives the viewer an entirely different way of seeing the land.

Lamb framed his photographs in a way that deliberately takes them out of context. The pictures now on display in his “Marks on the Land” exhibit at the Orange County Great Park, the site of the former base, depict images where nature’s course and man-made developments squash up against each other.

“The idea of these images … it isn’t so much about the place,” Lamb said. “It is about the abstract connections that I am seeing about this place. There’s not a sense of scale, for instance. You don’t know whether this is large or small.”

… Continue Reading The view from above

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Ornamental gold attire, including a ribbon-shaped crown, concave circular ear pendants, annular earring and a y-shaped breastplate are part of the “Sacred Gold” exhibit that opens at the Bowers Museum on Saturday, March 31. (Photo by Scott Smeltzer)

The gold crucifix and rosary studded with Colombian emeralds is known as “The Atocha Cross.”

In 1986 — 364 years after the Nuestra Señora de Atocha (“Our Lady of Atocha”) went down during a hurricane in the waters off what is now Key West, Fla. — a treasure-hunting expedition recovered the cross and rosary from the Spanish ship’s sunken cargo.

The glistening artifact now belongs to a private collector, but it’s about to make a public appearance at the Bowers Museum as an appendage to a larger exhibition titled “Sacred Gold: Pre-Hispanic Art of Colombia.” The exhibition that begins Saturday is comprised of golden objects and archaeological treasures from pre-Spanish Conquest Colombia.

The Museo del Oro in Bogotá, which houses an art collection owned by that nation’s central bank, has loaned some 200 gold, ceramic and stone artifacts for the show, which runs through July 1.

“Sacred Gold” is the Santa Ana museum’s second one in 2012 themed around gold. The first, focusing on natural gold pieces discovered in California, opened in February and runs through Sept. 9.

… Continue Reading Bowers strikes gold