re newport beach film fest: I was most interested in seeing the film "Osa: The Jewel of Costa Rica" (about the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica) because that's where I lived & worked for a while back in the early 90's. After originally going to Costa Rica to do disaster relief following the huge earthquake in 1991 I was then offered a job tutoring kids in Drake Bay area of Osa at a place called the "Drake Bay Wilderness Camp" . A couple by the name of Herb & Melanie owned this camp. He was an elderly American & she was a young Tica (female Costa Rican). They had two kids named Brian & Adrian who were in 2nd & 3rd grade & they wanted a private teacher/tutor, so I took the job not for the money but for the great experience...living in the rainforest near the beautiful Corcovado Natl Park, ...the camp was right on the bay...the only way to get there was by boat (or hiking or horseback, but not roads, no cars). It was like "Fantasy Island". Every week or so a few new guests would arrive, mostly from the USA, and they would choose various tourist options such as horseback riding, hiking, fishing, trip to corcovado, explore the river & waterfall(s) and much more. At first I stayed around the camp and just taught the kids, but later on they asked me to help out with the tourist expeditions. It was a great experience! I even got to see the total solar eclipse while I was there. And so when I saw this posted on the film festival schedule I made sure to go see it. It was a nice film, albeit didn't show any of the familiar places I knew (except for Corcovado). I emailed the producers (who are from newport beach) them later to find out more but they didn't respond. I figure they flew in and flew out and filmed this in a relatively short period of time so they may be a bit unfamiliar with more of the details of the area that you would pick up on if you lived there for a while. That's the one problem about making a documentary about a place so far away in a language you don't know. You get the superficial details but not much more. Nonetheless, they did a good job of stressing the importance of preservation of the rainforest.
