With extremely high ratings from audiences and movie critics alike, the next Friends of the Cinema presentation, Searching for Sugar Man, is likely to be popular with the Creston audience.
Rodriguez was a huge musical success in South Africa in the 1970s, but only after his rumoured death by suicide on an American stage after his debut album bombed. For two decades, South Africans danced and partied to the music of Rodriguez, long forgotten in his home country, the United States.
A search by two South Africans to find out the truth about the disappearance of their musical hero led to the making of Searching for Sugar Man. Once projected to be the great recording artist of his generation, the memory of Rodriguez is kept alive only by his music, which is now the soundtrack to an Academy Award-nominated film.
Searching for Sugar Man, having touched audiences around the world, was selected as a finalist in the best documentary feature in this year’s Oscar voting. Last year, it opened the Sundance Film Festival.
Searching for Sugar Man will presented at Prince Charles Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18. Admission is $10 at the door. Proceeds from Friends of the Cinema films go to local organizations.
—FRIENDS OF THE CINEMA