Sarasota Film Festival Celebrates 20

“In our 20^th year, we have more films than ever,” Mark Famiglio, Chairman and President of the Sarasota Film Festival said in a phone interview about the two-week event now underway until April 22. While many beautiful locations world over can boast of a film festival, SFF is often noted as a well-kept secret for its intimacy, and inspired audiences, reflecting the community’s commitment to the arts. This year Sarasota is especially popular for the new boutique hotels gracing the city’s downtown, and a new building space designated for the festival. “We were at the epicenter of financial collapse in 2008,” Famiglio exclaimed. “We recovered. Today we are well programmed, well conceived and FUN. Maybe we will last another 20 years.”

Highlights this year will include films by returning filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Rory Kennedy, and ones new, such as T. G. Herrington and Daniel Clinch who bring a delightful music documentary, A Tuba to Cuba. A feature, On Chesil Beach based on Ian McEwan’s novel, will be screened among many fiction films. The closing night film, a collaboration with the Disney Channel, Kennedy’s Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow will bring in some surprise guests for a Q&A. Three streets will be closed for the closing night party.

As in the past, the festival has been female centric with “see Jane” programming and screenings of a majority of films by female directors. Noted Famiglio, “We have films that speak to the abuse of power, and the impact of abuse on the male gender as well as female.”

A fascinating documentary, Dana Adam Shapiro’s Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders asks the question, how did girls wind up on the sidelines of our football games? Featuring a central interview with the DCC head Suzanne Mitchell and others including Against our Will author Susan Brownmiller, an unusual discourse emerges, as the film looks at the discipline and demeanor of this group of big haired, high kicking, scantily clad “ladies” through the eras of feminism. In an unexpected collision of art meeting the Zeitgeist, a “me too” moment results in a case of “frontier justice.” Audiences may be shocked, Shapiro said of his film that is “patriotic without being partisan.”

In her film, Half the Picture, director Amy Adrion interviews women directors, Ava Duverney, Catherine Hardwicke, Chris Hegedus, and many others on the difficulties of being hired to direct, in some cases, even after making blockbusters, as Hardwicke did with the Twilight series, or Sam Taylor-Johnson who made Fifty Shades of Gray. As to what it means to a filmmaker to be invited to Sarasota, she said, “The festival experience is a reward. We get to share our films with enthusiastic audiences.”

Regina Weinreich

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