Dear Diary: A tent saga

There is progressively less and less space in the office as submissions to the 6th Annual Topanga Film Festival converge from everywhere. Yesterday's offerings came from New Mexico, Sao Paolo, Brazil and Madrid. No doubt, this year's selection will have more of an international flair but now that we've got the films . . . where to show them. Somewhere along the road, festival co-founders Sara and Urs Baur decided that it was time to bring the festival to Topanga's main Piazza — Pine Tree Circle.

Simple. Throw up a tent in the middle of town. Circuses do it. Traveling medicine shows did it in bygone days. Entire gypsy colonies use them for communal living rooms, so why not us?

But wait, first one must get a lay of the land and in our case, a survey of the parking lot, confirmation from our tent vendor that an uneven surface notwithstanding, that the tent will not only be sturdy, but look good, meet the approval of the Los Angeles County Department of Building and Safety, the Fire Marshall and festival-goers.

There's more and now comes the tricky part: How do we get 12 solar panels (sufficient to run a projector, speakers and an airconditioning unit) nonchalantly positioned in an unobtrusive — or better yet — in an esthetically pleasing arrangement to fit within the sleek European design of a huge pink tent and make it look pretty from all four sides?

This is the part where we call in the big guns.  First, our sponsor/vendor Les Sumpter of Canoga Park-based A Rental Connection spent a good part of Bastille Day afternoon with festival co-founder Urs Baur walking through layout and logistics on the first day of the first heatwave of the summer.  Les celebrated 25-years in business last year.

In keeping with the festival's philosophy of digging deep into the community to not only make the festival better, fellow-Topangan Bernt Capra,  fresh from a 2-hour surf, was enlisted to design and decorate this year's festival home — the tent. Bernt is an award-winning Production Designer in film and television.