In its 16th year, the Wine Country Film Festival is now underway in Napa and Sonoma Valley in northern California. This annual event merges two of life's little pleasures into one splendid affair. The moveable feast this year opened at Domaine Chandon in Yountville, where the festivities began with pouring of the venerable winemakers' vintage 1995 brut, accompanied by luscious delicacies, all overlooking a stunning vista of the valley. At dusk, world premier of the opening film Simone, starring Al Pacino and Christine Keener, played to a full house under the stars. A comedic allegory of sorts, Simone tells the story of a washed up Hollywood director (Pacino) and his creation of a fictional mega-superstar (Rachel Roberts) using a computer software program. As his mouthpeice, she rises to unfathomable popularity and he to the man of the hour as the only person close to her, literally.

Also on opening night, an audience favorite and one of the festival's best offerings, Desaliñada [Salad Days], a twenty-minute short from Spanish director Gustavo Salmerón, is one of the freshest, most original and well-crafted things to come along in a while. The love story of a salad and a trout in a restaurant cooler with a host of other incredible edibles as they prepare (or are prepared) to meet their maker, Salad Days is hilarious and sweet. The players are live actors in some extraordinary costume design and the camera follows them to very novel territory.

The folks at Domaine Chandon were most gracious hosts. In addition to the vintner's own offerings, they poured a selection of wines from the Republic of Georgia to accompany festival offering In Vino Veritas, a documentary about wine, beginning 8,000 years ago and told mainly through visual images of the vine, its product in art and architecture. The director was in attendance along with the winemaker from Georgia who brought along some very nice wines and also translated the post screening Q and A. Daytime screenings were in the barrel room, pungent with the aroma of wine and oak. At sunset the final films or the day are presented on a wonderful large screen with a first rate sound system.

Festival organizers Steve and Justine Ashton have been at it since the beginning sixteen years ago and cull entries from all over the world to meet their goal of presenting a diverse program of world cinema. Other worthwhile offerings on the festival's opening weekend were Firefly Dreams made in Japan by British director John Williams, a touching, poignant tale of an urban teenage girl on the fast track, who is sent to live with her relatives in the country. She develops a relationship with an old woman that gently dramatizes the impact on a young life, a film lovely to look at and quite moving. The Cuban Game [Juego de Cuba] from El Manuel Martín Cuenca is a fascinating documentary history of Cuba as told by and about present and former Cuban baseball players, using the drive to win at baseball as a metaphor for class struggle. Numerous segues off the baseball theme portray an atypical view of Castro's Cuba and political relationship to the United States, using much archival footage of baseball and newsreels over the last 80 years. Another short, Alchemy, first directing effort from actress Anna Condo (A Wedding in Galilee), based on the Chekov short story A Work of Art, about a candlestick that gets passed around to various owners, rounded out the opening weekend nicely. The festival continues through August 11, 2002.