This week, the Florida Film Festival is packed with great independent films & events for all of us lucky Ourlandoians, and there are a few in particular that cover important community-minded topics that I think you will all enjoy. Please don’t miss some of these important films during one of our region’s coolest events, put on by our favorite indy theater & non-profit, the Enzian.
Read on for recommendations by Julie Norris of Dandelion Communitea Cafe or tune in here to listen to festival organizer Chris Blanc give his personal recommendations.
Special Event for Slow Foodies: Primo Film Feast with Chef Melissa Kelly
Chef Melissa Kelly will present a feast based on the movie, KING CORN, a documentary about two friends who travel from the East coast to the Midwest to learn how a subsidized crop (corn) drives our fast-food nation. They end up uncovering troubling answers about how our nation eats and how we farm. This 4-course meal will consist of creative, gourmet dishes made with farm fresh, organic ingredients. Only 30 seats available, which allows the attendee to have an intimate interaction with Melissa Kelly as well as Iron Chef Cat Cora!
Earth Days (Click title for preview & showtimes) This visually stunning epic recounts the modern environmental movement’s birth. On April 22, 1970–the very first Earth Day–more than 20 million Americans across the country marched for change and political action to protect the environment. Utilizing rare archival footage and nine witnesses to the events–from astronauts to government officials to eco-feminists–director Robert Stone (Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army, FFF 2004 Grand Jury Award – Best Doc Feature) has crafted a powerful and mesmerizing document of a transformative moment in our planet’s history.
Food Fight (Click title for preview & showtimes) Fashions for food change as regularly as the seasons. As we begin the 21st century with an increased sensitivity about what’s “green” as well as what’s “healthy,” how did we stray so far from the fresh vegetables and fruits of our farmer forebears? An overlooked part of the cultural revolution of the ’60s incorporated a back-to-the-land movement that has resulted in some of the finest cuisine in the country. Organic farmers, inner-city activists, chefs, as well as renowned restaurateur Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma author, Michael Pollan, anchor this homage to good food.
In a Dream (Click title for preview & showtimes) The artists among us–people like septuagenarian Isaiah Zegar and his wife Julia–take more risks in a day than many of us take in a lifetime. This loving, complex portrait by their son Jeremiah, explores the obsessive passion that possesses Isaiah to create 50,000 square feet of mosaic murals in their south Philadelphia neighborhood. The art is nothing short of magnificent–dizzying, reflective towers, and wall upon wall of beauty, painstakingly created by an artist living within a stone’s throw of sanity. Thousands of tourists make the pilgrimage to the neighborhood to drink it in.
The Garden (Click title for preview & showtimes) Bullies and bulldozers face off with family farmers in an unlikely battleground–a garden. Dozens of city-dwelling Latino gardeners worked an abandoned fourteen acres of blighted land to create the nation’s largest urban farm. But when vacated land becomes valuable land, promises made in 1992 started to crumble. More than sustenance of food was threatened by the would-be commercial developers of this property. Over time, the garden has created a sense of place–a place where the values of justice, hard work, and discipline are shared from generation to generation. This sense of place fuels the farmers to fight City Hall and other vested interests.
Local: Florida Shorts, Best of Brouhaha Highlights will be “People Like Us” (about the city of Orlando’s Ordinance 18A making it illegal for any one individual or group to feed more than 25 homeless people at a time on any regular basis in the downtown area. Eric Montanez of Food Not Bombs defied this law and became the first person in the state to be arrested for giving away food.), “Oviedo Chickens” & “Sam Rivers: Jazz Master of the Moment”
