Florida Film Festival

Florida Film Festival to Open with Orlando-Produced 'Renee'; Feature Talk with Barry Levinson

Devin Lee Fuller — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:07:40 GMT

The 2012 Florida Film Festival will be celebrating its 21st anniversary this year with a line-up of 168 films including 28 world premieres.

The festival will kick off with Nathan Frankowski's drama "Renee," which was filmed in Orlando, Florida.

Academy Award winning director Barry Levinson will also be on hand April 21 to present and discuss his 1999 film "Liberty Heights."

More details can be found at FloridaFilmFestival.com.

Full press release below:

FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES CELEBRITY GUEST, FOOD EVENTS, AND RECORD-BREAKING FILM AND EVENT LINEUP

The 2012 Festival Presents “An Afternoon With” Academy Award® Winner
Barry Levinson Featuring Live Q&A and Screening of “Liberty Heights”

Top Chef Star Marcel Vigneron Joins Other Culinary Superstars for Food Forum
And Saturday Night Feast

Film Schedule Officially Launched Online at FloridaFilmFestival.com with More Entries, Films, Represented Countries, and World Premieres Than Ever Before

Orlando, FL – It’s a great time to be a film enthusiast in Central Florida. Last night, the 2012 Florida Film Festival announced a stellar lineup of 168 films representing 31 countries. In a record-breaking year, the Festival received more entries (1700+) and is offering more films and World Premieres (28) than ever before.

Academy Award®-winning director, screenwriter, and producer Barry Levinson will present Liberty Heights, a humorous and touching drama that captures the spirit of change in Baltimore circa 1954 on Saturday, April 21 at Enzian. His lengthy list of credits includes Rain Man (Best Director Academy Award®), Bugsy, And Justice for All, Diner, Avalon, Wag the Dog, The Natural, Good Morning Vietnam, and HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack. Levinson will engage the audience with a live Q&A following the film.

Foodies will unite for a one-of-a-kind discussion on books, blogs, television, and film provided by culinary superstars Marcel Vigneron (Syfy Network’s Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen, Bravo’s Top Chef), Chad J. Galiano, Gui Alinat, Jeff Potter, and Martha Hall Foose. These food connoisseurs will discuss everything from fame and chef brands to how to stand out amongst thousands of foodie bloggers. Devour the latest scoop on current topics in the food world and savor tasty treats prepared by the Enzian kitchen. The celebration of food continues that evening with the Saturday Evening Feast. Winter Park’s own renowned Chef Brandon McGlamery will prepare an unforgettable meal at Luma on Park Ave. This exclusive, upscale event is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for any foodie. Seating is extremely limited. Dine with special guests from the Taste & Presentation food forum including Marcel Vigneron.

The Festival opens with Orlando production RENEE. Director Nathan Frankowski and other special guests will be on hand for a live Q&A on Friday, April 13, 7PM. Also that evening, the Opening Night Party kicks off at Enzian. Jam to the tunes of The Mud Flappers and dine on the best of local cuisine. Top local chefs serve up mouthwatering dishes from Eden Bar, The Ravenous Pig, White Wolf Café, K Restaurant, Black Bean Deli, Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress, and Sushi Pop!

The 2012 Festival, sponsored by Full Sail University, runs April 13-22 in Maitland, Winter Park, and Winter Garden. Venues include Enzian, Regal Winter Park Village 20, Eden Bar, Central Park in Winter Park, and Garden Theatre in Winter Garden.
The complete schedule of films and events is officially launched and available online at www.FloridaFilmFestival.com. A free downloadable guide is available online and can also be accessed via smartphones.

To purchase Festival passes and ticket packages, visit www.FloridaFilmFestival.com. Festival pass holders gain access to all regular films. Ticket package holders can redeem film vouchers for individual film tickets before they are available to the public. Early redemption occurs until Saturday, March 24. Individual film tickets go on sale to the general public on Sunday, March 25. Ticket prices start at $10.

Critic's Notebook: Notes from a Florida Film Festival Juror

Eric Kohn — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:02:11 GMT

To my mind, the most important criteria for an effective short film is an avoidance of the easy route. That outlook was central to this past week at the Florida Film Festival in Orlando, where I sat with my fellow jurors through five short film programs in three days. Eventually, we settled on awards for three of the 38 shorts and despite so many possibilities, we reached a consensus without much difficulty. Deserving candidates stood out from the pack.

A few shorts ran under five minutes, while others neared the 20-minute mark. Working under those temporal constraints, filmmakers -- many of whom are in early stages of their careers -- usually go for the easy gags, ending with a clever punchline. There's nothing inherently wrong with that approach, but when viewed several times over, it comes across as overly simplistic and portrays the short form as incapable of attaining the mature narrative possibilities available to features.

It doesn't have to be that way. A good short might do something clever in a brief period of time, but a great movie can take any shape or form, labels be damned.

This line of thinking was crucial for our jury's choices. (I was joined by Neal Block, head of distribution at Magnolia Pictures, and former Arthouse Films vice president Erin Owens.) For the first time in its 20-year history, the Florida Film Festival gained Oscar-qualifying status for its shorts. The animated and live-action shorts that received top can now make the short list for the 2012 Academy Awards. To paraphrase a line from "Spider-Man": With great power comes great possibilities.

That brings me to "Bottle," Kristen Lepore's lovely romantic fantasy, which we selected as the best animated short. With delicate craftsmanship, Lepore constructs a sweeping intercontinental romance between a creature made of sand and another made of snow. The two exchange messages in a bottle before they both decide to cross the sea. The heartbreaking result of that act -- what happens when sand and snow enter the water -- leads to the mesmerizing, poetic finale, rendered particularly moving by the clarity of this wordless love story between two natural objects. (Watch "Bottle" on YouTube.)

Another visual feast, Brent Bonacorso's "West of the Moon" wowed us with its phenomenally absurd portrait of child's dream. Littered with elegant layers of green-screen images and other trickery, the sepia-toned saga involves an old man recalling a wide range of surreal experiences, from playing poker with a robot to hanging with a pack of bespectacled walruses. You can't make this stuff up, but Bonacorso, a promising new visionary clearly inspired by the likes of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, somehow did.

Not content with simply honoring two shorts, we squeezed a special jury prize into the mix in order to highlight the memorably dark, thoughtful "After the Snow," director Brooke Sebold's short about a despondent young woman (Jeannine Kaspar) at a party who confronts the obnoxious slob who knocked her up. Intended as the outline for a feature, "After the Snow" conveys its unnerving scenario with two committed performances, tightly executed suspense and a provocative final shot that leaves much room for interpretation. Written by Matthew Tyler, the short is currently being expanded into a feature called "Gone June," according to a website for the production. It's hard not to imagine that the wintry setting and equally chilly demeanor of the characters in "After the Snow" will expand nicely into the feature-length format.

But short films don't need to contain the inkling of a feature in order to succeed. We chose movies that we liked; the prizes’ larger ramifications were secondary considerations. I only realized later that "Bottle" and "West of the Moon" may have already qualified for Oscar consideration since both won awards at other festivals earlier this year, rendering moot that entire aspect of our jury's agenda.

And that's fine. We were more concerned with consensus than advocacy. As we engaged in our final deliberation on Friday evening, sitting across from a moonlit lake in the expansive backyard of Enzian Theater owners Philip and Sigrid Tiedtke, we just talked about the movies we liked and the opportunity we had to spread the word.

"Project Nim" to Open 20th Florida Film Festival; 21 World Premieres Set

Brian Brooks — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:33:19 GMT

21 World Premieres, 4 North American Premieres, 7 U.S.Premieres, and 39 East Coast Premieres are on tap for the 20th anniversary of the Florida Film Festival, taking place in Orlando. FFF's full roster includes 160 films from 25 countries, with Oscar-winning director James Marsh's latest, "Project Nim" opening the event April 8 at the Enzian Theater.

The documentary tells the tale of a chimp taken from its mother and raised as a human in an upper west side brownstone in 1970s New York.

"We're excited to launch our 20th edition of the Festival with this sensational documentary," commented Henry Maldonado, President of Enzian and the festival in a statement. "We opened the first Florida Film Festival with the documentary, 'A Brief History of Time,' and it's meaningful for us salute that moment 20 years later."

"The incredible scope of cinematic expression in this year's Festival is found not simply in terms of the volume of submissions or its demographics but in the variety of types of filmmakers and the issues they explore," added Matthew Curtis, Florida Film Festival Programming Director in a statement. "This year we are screening films that embody risk-taking, diversity, and aesthetic innovation, and we are hopeful that audiences will find them as engaging and entertaining as we did."

The 2011 Florida Film Festival takes place April 8 - 17.

The Narrative and Documentary competitions follow with information provided by the Florida Film Festival.

Narrative competition:

"Dog Sweat" - East Coast Premiere (Directed by Hossein Keshavarz)
"Fanny, Annie & Danny" - (Directed by Chris Brown)
"Hamill" - (Directed by Oren Kaplan)
"The Happy Poet" - Florida Premiere (Directed by Paul Gordon)
"Kinyarwanda" - East Coast (Directed by Alrick Brown)
"Norman" - Southeast Premiere (Directed by Jonathan Segal)
"Silver Tongues" - East Coast Premiere (Directed by Simon Arthur)
"This Narrow Place" - World Premiere (Directed by Sooney Kadouh
"Without" - East Coast Premiere and 2nd US Showing (Directed by Mark Jackson)
"Wuss" - East Coast Premiere (Directed by Clay Liford)

Documentary competition:

"Bobby Fischer against the World" - Regional Premiere (Directed by Liz Garbus)
"Chekhov for Children" - Southeast Premiere (Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer)
"Journey from Zanskar" - Southeast Premiere (Directed by Frederick Marx)
"Holy Wars" - East Coast Premiere (Directed by Stephen Marshall)
"Louder Than a Bomb" - Florida Premiere (Directed by Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel)
"Made in India" - Florida Premiere (Directed by Rebecca Haimowitz and Vaishali Sinha)
"mindFlux" - Southeast Premiere (Directed by Ryan Kerrison)
"A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt" - Florida Premiere (Directed by Sally Rowe)
"Stuff" - World Premiere (Directed by Lawrence Johnson)
"Windfall" - Southeast Premiere (Directed by Laura Israel)

FFF's 21 World Premieres Features:

"A Beautiful Belly" - (Directed by Andrew Kenneth Gay)
"TANZANIA a Friendship Journey" - (Directed by Sylvia Caminer)
"This Narrow Place" - (Directed by Sooney Kadouh)
"Stuff" - (Directed by Lawrence Johnson)

World Premiere Shorts:

"La Salle de Jeux" (The Playroom) - (Directed by Tim Miller)
"Thule" - (Directed by Robert Scott Wildes)
"The Thief" - (Directed by Rachel Weisz)
"Victims of Gravity" - (Directed by Vlady Valentin Oszkiel)
"California Romanza" - (Directed by Eva Mendes)
"The Candidate" - (Directed by David Karlak)
"The Deep" - (Directed by PES)
"Tales of Mere Existence: How to Be a Man" - (Directed by Lev Yilmaz)
"Tales of Mere Existence: How You May Fall for a Girl on Facebook" - (Directed by Lev Yilmaz)
"Nosy Bear" - (Directed by Fran Krause)
"Snot Bubble Boy" - (Directed by John Derevlany)
"Bad Influences" - (Directed by Kate Emery)
"A Coincidence of Sorts" - (Directed by Edgar Jorge)
"City of Murals" - (Directed by Ricky Rose)
"I'm Sorry I Forgot" - (Directed by Jason Rosette)
"Deadliest Throw" - (Directed by Joe York)

[For more information and a full lineup, visit the Florida Film Festival's website.]