“I had 4 toes of water in my lounge. Once I obtained again in there, there have been useless fish in my home.”
The movie world has been no stranger to pure disasters the previous few months — as everyone knows, having seen the horrific photos of the Los Angeles wildfires that engulfed Pacific Palisades and Altadena this January. And Mark Famiglio is not any exception.
That scene of flooding was what greeted the Sarasota Movie Competition president final September when he returned to his Siesta Key dwelling after evacuating from Hurricane Helene. Actually, his home was largely inaccessible to restore work, as his driveway had nearly washed out in its entirety. As was frequent everywhere in the Florida Gulf Coast, the street close by was lined with a canyon of fridges and cupboards and different home items ruined by the flood waters and ignored by the curb for the town to haul away. After which Hurricane Milton hit lower than two weeks later.
Ask anybody else concerned with the Sarasota Movie Competition, which pulls primarily from locals to function volunteers, and so they have been seemingly affected too. Senior programmer Brian Gordon, who solely moved to Sarasota 4 years in the past, had his first expertise of shopping for plywood at Residence Depot and boarding up his home. “I’ll always remember the expertise of Milton’s eye passing over us and it instantly getting calm exterior,” Gordon mentioned.
1000’s of individuals throughout Sarasota and the broader Tampa Bay space are nonetheless displaced from Helene and Milton. A whole lot of companies nonetheless haven’t reopened throughout the area, or might by no means reopen. However just for a second did Famiglio, a neighborhood entrepreneur who obtained his begin in actual property, severely contemplate not holding the Sarasota Movie Competition in 2025. Instantly, he and his workforce noticed that staging the 10-day competition, which kicked off April 4, was extra essential than ever.
Can a movie competition assist a neighborhood rebound from a pure catastrophe? Sarasota is actually going to attempt. And relying on the outcomes, it could possibly be a mannequin for a way the movie neighborhood in a metropolis ravaged by catastrophe can support in its restoration.
Glenn Shut-starring AFI FEST premiere “The Summer season E book” and Maria Schneider biopic “Being Maria” have already performed to offered out crowds on the competition, now in the midst of its run. As regular, the competition kicked off with a poolside celebration — and its beloved road celebration is about for April 11. Plus, the filmmaker who’s made Florida his canvas with a neon-tinted zeal like nobody else, Concord Korine, will likely be receiving the Trailblazer Award in individual.
Although performing arts venues are again up and operating, that is the largest city-wide occasion set in Sarasota since Milton made landfall proper over Siesta Key on October 9. “Doing what we usually do is what issues probably the most,” Gordon mentioned. “After one thing like this, simply doing what we usually do has much more affect than regular. I feel individuals wish to get out a little bit bit extra, much more than up to now as a result of individuals simply wish to get again to regular.”
For Gordon, who additionally packages for Sundance, Tribeca, and PBS’s “POV” after lengthy stints on the San Francisco Worldwide Movie Competition and Nashville Movie Competition, Sarasota is essential in one other respect for the specialty market. “A few of the movies that we present gained’t find yourself on the massive display screen once more,” he mentioned. Although Sarasota will not be a gross sales competition, it’s a place the place viewers sentiment for movies with out distribution may be famous. Added Famiglio, “A few of these filmmakers depend on this competition and so they want it not only for the networking, however simply to showcase their artwork. It’s too essential to not do.”
As regular, the competition lineup options a number of motion pictures from Sarasota or the broader Florida Gulf Coast area, together with the opening evening movie, the documentary “Marcella,” concerning the legendary evangelist of Italian delicacies in America, Marcella Hazan. She lived in close by Longboat Key till her loss of life in 2013. However even some movies that don’t have anything to do with Sarasota have taken on a brand new resonance for this neighborhood in restoration, such because the closing evening movie “Lovers,” directed by Taylor McFadden, a few group of associates choosing up the items after one among their very own took his life.
This competition, like several competition, may be an essential approach for the neighborhood round it to see itself. As soon as once more, SarasotaOut.com printed a Homosexual Information to the Sarasota Movie Competition. In a state the place LGBTQ rights have been persistently underneath assault (regardless of having the third largest LGBTQ inhabitants of any state within the U.S.), this platform may be extremely significant, because it was final yr for the documentary “A Home Is Not a Disco.”
“I’ve individuals which are very near me — household and shut associates — a number of the most essential individuals in my whole life, which are wrestling with these kinds of points and confronted with, ‘Do we’ve got to run from Florida? Can we not come to Florida? Do we’ve got to go away? Are we shifting to Canada?,’” Famiglio mentioned. “I cope with this continually, nearly every day. And I don’t know, we obtained to do one thing. And with the movie competition, I feel movie as a type of expression is a vital approach the place you may persuade and persuade individuals and preserve issues on the menu with out pushing it into individuals’s faces.”
Famiglio is all about having dialogues. The day after our telephone interview in mid-March, he was going to have lunch with Governor Ron DeSantis and take part in a roundtable with the governor, who dramatically lower nearly all public funding for the humanities throughout Florida in 2024, together with grants for the Sarasota Movie Competition. You possibly can’t tackle the issue in the event you don’t have interaction in dialog, proper?
“Actually, all the things that was happening when California obtained slammed with the wildfires, propelled us to do that yr’s competition much more,” Famiglio mentioned. This is a chance to indicate that movie can actually be a factor that brings a neighborhood collectively. Movie is usually a catalyst for conversations that have to occur. And it may be a a lot wanted escape, a little bit of enjoyable for a neighborhood that basically wants it.