Florida Film Festival

The cult hit of the Florida Film Festival’s (FFF) ninth outing this June was Ben Stiller’s outrageous Heat Vision & Jack, a half-hour television pilot starring Jack Black and Ron Silver that Fox deemedtoo extreme for the general public. At the FFF, however, Heat Vision’s tale of a former astronaut evading aliens and government assassins on a talking motorcycle voiced by Owen Wilson fit neatly into a 10-day program as strong on visionary cinema as traditional narrative forms.

With upward of 50 features and as many shorts screening over 10 days, Florida had plenty of room to include idiosyncratic work along with proven crowd-pleasers from higher-profile fests. A 15-program strong spotlight section showcased indies like Chuck & Buck, Love and Sex and Jesus’ Son from the release schedules of the big indie distributors.

Home base for the fest remains Orlando’s Enzian Theater, a unique nonprofit arthouse housed in a faded Southern mansion that offers indie films and experimental work year-round in an auditorium set up for tableside meal service. This year a new theater was added out at Universal Studios, a Fest sponsor.

Feature jury awards went to John-Luke Montias’s Bobby G. Can’t Swim, a gritty Hell’s Kitchen drug story shot vérité-style, and Robinson Devor’s The Woman Chaser. Documentary prizes went to Legacy, Tod Lending’s portrait of a Chicago family struggling to break free from four generations on welfare, and Me & Isaac Newton, Michael Apted’s round-the-world journey to find out what makes seven science luminaries tick.

Florida’s Audience Awards went to documentaries Legacy and Naked States, Arlene Donnelly’s trip across the U.S. with photographer Spencer Tunick, and Stanley’s Gig, Marc Lazard’s love story about an aging musician and a reclusive chanteuse, both fresh from screenings the previous week at the Newport International Film Festival. – Mary Glucksman

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Florida Film Festival by Mary Glucksman