Tampa Film Fan

This eclectic film festival explores the cinematic world of independent filmmakers, offering a spectrum of features, documentaries and personal films, plus live performances, workshops and lectures.

This year’s theme, Global Snapshots, presents innovative films exploring the culturally diverse realms of our lives while challenging pre-existing notions of our world. Due to this being a presidential election year, many of the feature documentaries were selected to illuminate political and cultural issues certain to be topics of discussion in the presidential debates.

Opening the festival’s feature documentary line-up is Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. The film investigates the consequences of the use of extreme rendition and possible torture in the ‘war on terrorism’ and discusses related U.S. Constitutional issues. The screening is scheduled Friday, April 18, 7:30 p.m. at the HCC Performing Arts Building. $5.00. R Rated. Viewer discretion advised. Age 17 and up.

Director Bari Pearlman will present her feature documentary, Daughters of Wisdom, about the only women Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The screening is scheduled Saturday, April 19, 4:30 p.m. at the HCC Performing Arts Building. $5.00.

The premiere of Tampa’s Guzzo Brothers’ newest docudrama, Ghosts of Ybor:Charlie Wall, about the notorious Ybor gangster, is scheduled Saturday, April 19, 6:30 p.m. at the HCC Performing Arts Building. $10.00.

The fest will screen War/Dance, a 2008 Academy Award nominee for Best Feature Doc. The film follows a group of ex-child soldiers in Uganda as they rediscover their humanity through a dance competition. The screening is scheduled Sunday, April 20, 1:30 p.m. at the HCC Performing Arts Building. $5.00. Viewer discretion advised.

Other feature documentaries to be screened include The New Samaritians, Nice Bombs, El Enmigrante, and Saint Death. Synopses for these titles are on the website www.yborfilmfestival.com. The complete schedule will be announced April 1.

Thursday Night, April 17:
Opening Night Celebration: So Real
Experimental shorts and animations projected on/in and around the new HCC Performing Arts Building. Various live performances by HCC dance and theater departments. Performing Arts Building, 7–10 p.m. Free and open to public.

Opening Night Lecture:
Illumined Pleasures:Dali and Film
Performing Arts Building, 7:00 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Salvador Dalí is celebrated as many things – surrealist, painter, author, theoretician, celebrity, prankster and agitator. But what is less known is that he had a lifelong involvement in film, and it is in the world of film where all of these aspects of his identity come into play. In conjunction with the current ground-breaking Dalí Museum exhibit, Dalí and Film, this talk by curator Peter Tush (with film clips) focuses on Dalí’s involvement with film - as a fan, a screenwriter, a filmmaker, and an art director - examining his remarkable collaborations with such film greats as Luis Buñuel, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney.

Peter Tush is the Curator of Education at the Salvador Dalí Museum and the instructor of “Dalí and Film” at the University of South Florida.

All screenings will be held at Hillsborough Community College-Ybor, in the HCC Performing Arts Building at the corner of Palm Ave and 14th Street.

All screenings are $5.00 unless noted. Tickets are available at the box office located in the Performing Arts Building. All opening night events, workshops, panels and live performances are free.