Faire: An American Renaissance

Faire: An American Renaissance (2009) is thrilled to have its premiere in the Bay Area on the weekend of October 10 and 11 as part of the Oakland International Film Festival. The film presents the creation of the Renaissance Faire and its metamorphosis to present day - the good and the bad, the pure and the bawdy, the struggles and the solutions. A vibrant cast of characters shares their stories about the Faire and how the movement informed their lives.

The story begins in 1963 when the “Renaissance Pleasure Faire” was born as a class project by a history teacher on a small field on Haskell’s Rascals Ranch in Los Angeles. The idea quickly caught fire, as a place to critique, mock or escape the turbulent times of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the 1960s. The namesake historical era in Europe actually parallels the change and rebirth that was also happening in America at that time. The film chronicles how Ron and Phyllis Patterson took a weekend event and turned it into a worldwide phenomenon, and how the Faire’s counter culture blossomed into now familiar mainstream events like guerilla street performance, living history reenactments, Reduced Shakespeare, and the hand craft movement.

The film shows how the Faire is adapting, and changing. It ends on an upbeat note, chronicling the evolution of the Gilroy Faire, the original offspring of the first Faire in Los Angeles, that has now re-risen from being shut down to becoming the first participant-owned democratically run Faire which many think re-captures the “old time” authentic Faire feeling.