Following a brief flurry of VIP events at Hotel Playa Escondida, the official opening of the first annual Festival Sayulita kicked off Thursday afternoon, January 17th, in the plaza in downtown Sayulita. Even before the festival kicked into gear, it was clear something exciting was going on as Festival Sayulita, Riviera Nayarit Tourism, El Secreto Tequila, the Sayulita Surf Club, and our own sayulitabeach.com all had set up booths around the plaza. With a big stage occupying the street to one side of the plaza, and the streets closed to traffic, it was showtime around 5 pm; by then, most of the people in attendance had sampled a little raicilla, a little blanco or reposada or anejo tequila, or perhaps a few of the tangy cucumber jalapeno margaritas being handed out at the Riviera Nayarit booth, featuring Revancha tequila. So everybody was feeling pretty good.
After festival founding partner and organizer Gabbi Villarrubia said the required words of thanks to all the supporters of the festival, and also spoke his always touching love letter to Sayulita, the action started. First, a blast of music, from Banda Aguamilpena, a 16 piece band featuring a bunch of very enthusiastic teenagers playing really loud banda music. They all wore red shirts and blew everybody away for half an hour. Generally speaking, the Mexicans loved banda and the gringos cover their ears. Like punk rock, banda is an acquired taste. But they got the party started. Not long after they finished a polished troupe of folkloric dancers came on stage and put on a magnificent show, with plenty of skirt-swirling, heel-stomping action; at the end, the dancers came down off the stage and pulled mostly willing audience members out of the crowd to dance in the street with them, a lovely, spirited touch.
By then it was getting dark, and over at the Casa de la Cultura, the very first movie of Festival Sayulita was just getting started, right on time at 6:30 pm. This was Circo, a bittersweet look at the life and times of a small Mexican family circus that has been traveling the roads of Mexico and playing small towns for a hundred years. Bittersweet because by the end, you sensed the next generation would probably fail to keep the circus going. But sadness aside, it is a lovely documentary, and was made by none other than Aaron Schock, a part-time Sayulita resident and member of a family that has had property here for decades. The venue—the Casa de la Cultura, that is—was full for this show, and there were even waiters taking drink orders and delivering cocktails and beers from one of the nearby bars. Very posh.
An hour or so later the next round of short films kicked into gear at the Ejido building; the house wasn’t full for all of these films, but there was a respectable crowd. I caught a few moments of El Andalon, a documentary about a man who serves as a healer among the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, and found even the few moments I had time for very moving.
People were perhaps taking a break and getting ready for the evening’s biggest film event, the showing of Bella Vita on the beach. This is a wonderful movie about a California surfer who goes back to Italy to immerse himself in his family’s past and his own roots, and also to explore Italy’s small but intense and engaging surfing culture. With a great mix of surfing footage and beautiful Italian scenery, this was a heartfelt and wonderful movie, and a perfect one for Sayulita.
As for the venue: a full moon rising, a huge, inflatable screen set up on the beach in front of Don Pedro’s, hundreds of portable seats including cushioned lounge chairs for the VIPS, a perfect evening temperature around 70 or 75 degrees, and the ocean tumbling in the background—all of this transformed Sayulita Beach into what had to have been the most beautiful and desirable film venue on earth, at least for that first hour or two of that first movie, as we all discovered and/or rediscovered the magic of Sayulita in a wonderful new way. Movies on the beach!
Two more days and nights of films, tequila, food and fun are still upcoming. Stay tuned for coverage.
