Английская Википедия:Borscht Film Festival

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The Borscht Film Festival is a film festival organized by the Borscht Corporation held in Miami, Florida roughly every 18–24 months. The festival's mission is to tell Miami stories, forging the cinematic identity of the city. While most of the films screened are commissioned specifically for the festival by the Borscht Corporation, they also accept works where the subject matter or filmmaker has some tie to South Florida.

Known as "the weirdest film festival on the planet," the festival is characterized by a gonzo sensibility, sense of spectacle, and focus on regional storytelling. While critics of the festival point out its chaotic structure, they also acknowledge that it is part of an overall ethos that is "teeming with lunacy and inspired imagination." It has been lauded for its "visionary and experimental organizational methods” with Filmmaker Magazine going as far as to recognize it as the most conceptually bold film festival of its era, and also a reinvention of the concept of a film festival.

Over the years the festival grew from a small, one night underground screening of student films to an internationally recognized event that became influential in the world of independent film for its inspired programming and curation, supporting the early work of artists like Jillian Mayer, Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney, John Wilson, Terence Nance, Rachel Rossin, and more. Films that first played at the Borscht Festival later went on to screen at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, SXSW, and various other festivals.

The Borscht Film Festival was founded by Lucas Levya and a group of New World School of the Arts alums in 2005.

History

2003-2004

The origins of the festival are traced to a series of events by a group of New World School of the Arts students in 2004. There was no film program at the public high school, so students from different art programs pooled equipment and resources to help each other create short films based on different challenges inspired by The Five Obstructions.

They would then host parties with names such as "Smudged" and "UnMinced" to screen the finished films for each other and their peers.

2005-2008

After graduating high school in 2005, the group continued to collaborate on videos. With most of the filmmakers attending schools out of state, and no place to showcase their movies locally, Leyva organized the first official Borscht Film Festival on December 30, 2005 at the Miami Shores Performing Arts Theater. It was hosted by a functional robot named Paris Hilton.

The second Borscht Film Festival took place on August 2nd, 2007 at the Miami Science Museum Planetarium. Attendees were encouraged to bring sleeping bags.

By 2008 Leyva had moved back to Miami from New York. His time away made him realize the untapped cinematic potential of the city. He began collaborating with Andrew Hevia to refocus the festival on regional storytelling. They formed a collective with other like-minded artists under the CCCV(Roman numeral for 305, Miami's area code) banner and issued a manifesto.

CCCV collectively made 17 different films, each about a different neighborhood in Miami and screened them at the Tower Theater in Little Havana on December 27th, 2008. The attendance at the event far exceeded capacity, which prompted a visit from the fire marshal.

2009

In 2009 they were able to procure support from a local pineapple-flavored soda called Jupiña and the newly-formed Miami World Cinema Center to commission five original short films from filmmakers under the age of 30 (including the first screenplay by Tarell McCraney), each representing a different neighborhood in Miami.

They screened these shorts, as well as others from local filmmakers, at the next Borscht Film Festival. The screening sold out the 1700-seat Gusman Theater in downtown Miami, with people attempting to scalp the free tickets to those waiting outside the over-capacity venue.

The festival expanded to three days and took place November 28-30, 2009. Other programming included a symposium on locally-based director Michael Bay at the fictional University of Wynwood, and a bike-in movie to see Medicine for Melancholy by Miami native Barry Jenkins at Sweat Records in Little Haiti.

Local press noted the festivals emergence from the underground. From an article titled “Borscht Film Festival is Miami's alt-culture summit” in the Miami Herald:

“I've been watching culture in Miami for two decades now, and this felt like a critical mass that was new. Miami's always bred talent - but it doesn't usually manage to keep it. Too hard to get produced, too hard to make the power brokers pay attention to anything new and young, too hard to find a new space when the few available resources are taken up by figures that have been ensconced for a long time. Maybe the Borscht Festival, and its like, can change that.”

The 2009 Borscht Film Festival was awarded "Best Film Festival" by the Miami New Times in their annual "Best of Miami" awards.

It marked the first time their work was noticed outside of Miami, as commissioned shorts later screened at Cannes, Tribeca and Sundance respectively, and Jillian Mayer’s Scenic Jogging was chosen as one of the winners of YouTube Play Creative Video Biennial and screened at Guggenheim Museums around the world.

2011: Borscht 7

In 2010, Borscht was awarded their first grant by the Knight Foundation. The 23-year-old festival director accepted the award with the Knight Foundation logo shaved into his head, which charmed CEO Alberto Ibargüen. In order to accept the grant, they had to open their first bank account. With the funding, they created a free open call for Miami movie pitches and founded the Borscht Corporation to oversee production of the commissioned films.

The 2011 festival expanded to two weekends, taking place between April 16 and April 23, 2011. Events featured a 15 foot tall piñata filled with adderall named James Francco, homemade robot battles, a campaign speech and performance by 2 Live Crew front man Uncle Luke (then running for Mayor of Miami-Dade), and a stunt where in the month leading up to the festival, their offices became a public exhibition in a Wynwood art gallery where the staff of the fest lived and worked and visitors could observe them 24 hours a day.

The main night took place at the Adrienne Arsht Center, where new films premiered as rough cuts before a capacity crowd of 1800, with an overflow line that snaked around the block to Biscayne Boulevard.

This festival was branded Borscht 7, although it appears there were only four previous iterations of the Borscht Film Festival.

It was the first time the festival and its filmmakers were noticed by national press, including a journalist who wrote in Vice Magazine:

"Miami is the surface-capable city where if you're a local or student filmmaker, one either sticks around to pursue making ads for, say, Crispin Porter, or relocates to Los Angeles or New York City (the very cities that have placed a stronghold on Miami's media and filmic iconography for decades.) Suddenly, in a single season, the place is in favor of handing $150 thousand and professional resources over to the kind of heady, collective 23-year-old energy that dependably says, "F*** Hollywood. We can do this all ourselves. Our stop signs shall be famous also." Technology and a nasty wake of dreamers have seemingly come to a head, allowing Borscht's 20-somethings to plant a flag, and allowing Miami's denizens, naturally, to realize there's money to be made, and an identity to be seized, cultivated, and home grown."

The journalist also noted the unusual (at the time) practice of embracing online videos in their programming. The festival was a coming out party of sorts for the community. Of the shorts that were commissioned for the event, most went on to play other festivals around the world, including four at SXSW and a second year in a row at Sundance. Mayer and festival director Leyva landed on Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" list. Others went viral on YouTube and Vimeo, and one, Chlorophyl, foreshadowed Jenkins returning to make what would eventually become Moonlight in the Miami New Times:

"He pauses, looking out over the city he swore he'd never move back to. Yet Chlorophyl has kicked up some ideas for a film shot nowhere less than Liberty City. 'I want to make Medicine for Miami,' he says. 'Now, maybe I will.'"

External links

• Шаблон:Official website

Шаблон:US-film-festival-stub Шаблон:Miami-stub