Friday, April 20-----The Sarasota Film Festival reaches its climax this evening with its legendary Night of 1000 Stars Tribute, which will begin at 9:30pm tonight at Michael's On East (a venue change from the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall). The Festival will be paying tribute to a stellar group of film industry luminaries, including an Excellence in Producing Award for IFC Entertainment president Jonathan Sehring (BOYS DON'T CRY, MEN WITH GUNS, WAKING LIFE, GRAY'S ANATOMY), a Lif...
Wednesday, April 18-----The premiere of the indie film ORPHANS, in the Independents Vision Competition here, is definitely bittersweet for the director Ry Russo-Young. The film, about two sisters, one a teacher in a rural town and the other a writer living in the big city who reunited for a birthday party, will debut at the Festival this weekend. The director cast old friend Lily Wheelwright, someone she has known since grade school, who also ...
Tuesday, April 17---While Sarasota may be noted for its beautiful sunsets, pristine beaches and cultural offerings, it is also an important city of architectural interest. In the years after the second World War, a number of architects, influenced by modernism and the Bauhaus movement, built a number of intriguing public and private buildings, which constitute an architectural legacy of some renown. Whether this legacy is properly prized by local authorities is another issue. As Sarasota grows i...
Monday, April 17-----One of the best attended sidebars of the Sarasota Film Festival is its Emerging Jewish Voices program, featuring a diverse group of Jewish-themed films that provide a contemplative and suggestive look at the re-examination of Jewish history and a sense of what is important to contemporary Jewish culture. The Jewish community is particularly mindful of keeping its history, both tragic and transecendent, alive in the hearts and minds of its members. This sentiment reaches...
Sunday, April 16---With the tail end of the Northeastern storm that has been plaguing the Eastern half of the United States whipping through Sarasota (for half the day, at least), the respites of the Festival’s jam-packed schedule provided a dry and warm alternative to the blustery winds outside the theater. This being my first full day of screenings, I opened myself to the serendipity of film hopping, only realizing after the day was done that there emerged a kind of symmetry to it all.The fi...
The Sarasota Film Festival opened last friday with its head in the stars......courtesy of the East Coast premiere of the Sundance Film Festival sleeper hit IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON. This dazzling documentary feature film, which won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Competition at Sundance, is a visually exhilirating account of the triumphs and tragedies of the Apollo space program, as recalled by the astronauts and technicians who made the giant leap into the next stage of exploration of t...
Friday, April 13----The Sarasota Film Festival opens this evening with its head in the stars......courteosy of the East Coast premiere of the Sundance Film Festival sleeper hit IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON. This dazzling documentary feature film, which won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Competition at Sundance, is a visually exhilirating account of the triumphs and tragedies of the Apollo space program, as recalled by the astronauts and technicians who made the giant leap into the next st...
Wednesday, April 11-----The 9th edition of the Sarasota Film Festival, one of the most dynamic and fastest growing film events in the country, will kick off this Friday evening with its most ambitious and exciting program to date. The 10-day event, which features a mix of emerging talents, international cinema and salutes to cinema greats, takes place in the beautiful Gulf Coast resort city of Sarasota, Florida (home of some of the most glorious sunsets this ex-Floridian has ever seen). The Fes...
