You are in luck. The June issue of SRQ magazine hits newsstands tomorrow, where you can read all of our print coverage of the Sarasota Film Festival this year. That includes interviews with organizers, filmmakers and Q&As with some of the biggest stars, as well as fantastic photography of this year’s event.
And you can find additional material here. We will be publishing new content at SRQBacklot.com tomorrow, coinciding with the drop date for the magazine. Have fun reliving SFF 2013.
If you were wondering when you could hear that song Alicia Witt recorded with Ben Folds for the Pasadena soundtrack, well look what we have for you.
And if you want a download, Pasadena director Will Slocombe is asking people to just tweet something and you get the song for free. Head here to activate the download.
Admittedly, creating a film about theater tryouts wasn’t a huge stretch for the minds behind the short film Tryouts. ”I’m an unabashed theater geek,” said director Lauren Ciaravalli, “and it’s just such a funny crazy world that it just felt like such a rich setting.”
Virtually the whole team behind Tryouts is made up of students at New York University, many of whom are constantly in the world of auditions. “It’s par for the course,” said lead actress Sarah Jes Austel. The relationships were true to life to, with actress Jordan McDonough playing Austel’s best friend, a role she is familiar with in the real world.
Tryouts premiered at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival. Listen to our conversation with the team, recorded in partnership with WSRQ.
Pulling the resources together to direct and produce a feature film is challenging under any circumstances. But Forgotten Kingdom director Andrew Mudge also the challenge of making a film in undeveloped parts of Africa. “Just getting from point A to point B most days was a challenge,” Mudge said. But through private equity, a private grant from the nation of Lesotho and hard work by a dedicated crew, the work got done.
And ever since, the film has been rewarded with a string of awards in the film festival circuit. That includes the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival.
“It is such a bonus to come to an artistic community and hit it out of the park,” said producer T.R. Boyce.
Please listen to our interview with Mudge, recorded in partnership with WSRQ.
The subject of health care has been top tier in American politics the past few years, but a seldom-discussed facet is the impact on individuals’ lives when they do not have regular health care or decent insurance. The makers of Remote Area Medical devoted an entire feature documentary to that topic, going to a clinic in Appalachia to see the lives of those who do not regularly receive medical attention.
“If you haven’t seen a dentist in 20 years, you can’t get a job or take care of family,” said co-director Farihah Zaman. “You don’t have pride on yourself. It impacts your desire to work and take care of yourself. There are deeper consequences than physical pain.”
Pasadena is a realistically sophisticated script in terms of emotional causality and the nuanced depiction of the character’s lives and dynamics, even if the dramatic drivers are collectively improbable. Writer/director Will Slocombe is often subtle with indicators to ride the film’s vicissitudes, and the narrative is so dense with them it can be difficult to thoroughly sponge up in one pass – I still wonder over Lindsay’s stance toward the physical Nina-Deborah conflict, and why does Poppy confide in the clearly unreliable Nina? A strong dynamic of Slocombe’s approach is his effective use of action as non-verbal implicator and symbolism; a brilliant example is Nina and Lindsay’s yoga scene, which is a powerful determinant of Nina’s wasted precociousness.
Alicia Witt, Peter Bogdanovich, Cheryl Hines and Will Slocombe at the Sarasota Film Festival
Suzanne Clement, pictured between Mickey Sumner and Mariel Hemingway, at the Tribute Luncheon at the Sarasota Yacht Club.
While actress Suzanne Clement has already earned plenty of accolades for her performance in Laurence Anyways, the French Canadian star stilled seemed giddy to pick up trophies in Sarasota for both herself and the film. “This film has been shown in a lot of countries, I don’t know how many,” Clement said. “I’m so excited to be here.”
Clement arrived in Sarasota knowing she would pick up the World Cinema Award for her performance in the film. But she learned on Saturday night that Laurence Anyways was picked by Sarasota Film Festival jurors as the winner of the Narrative Feature Competition. Continue reading
