SRQ DAILY Apr 12, 2021
Monday Business Edition
"It is clear that for the filmmakers and for the community, the in-person portion of this is very important."
A documentary about legendary actress Rita Moreno and a narrative feature starring Toni Collette and Damian Lewis will open and close the Sarasota Film Festival. The B-52s’ Fred Schneider will host a street party. While subdued and with safety perpetually in mind, organizers for an event known by its extravagant parties say they are happy to bring the celebration of cinema back in person later this month.
“It is clear that for the filmmakers and for the community, the in-person portion of this is very important,” said Mark Famiglio, president and chairman of the Sarasota Film Festival.
The festival this year will run from April 30 through May 9, later than usual and in the thick of Oscar season. The box office will open on Thursday, when patrons can buy tickets to shows at CineBistro and maybe some outdoor and drive-in screenings. as further event details come out, a better view of what exactly this hybrid virtual and in-person event will look like will come into frame.
The festival on Friday announced its tentpole films. Those include opening film Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided To Go For It, directed by Mariem Perez Riera. The documentary recounts the career of Moreno, whose EGOT-winning career runs from playing Anita in the 1961 classic musical West Side Story to starring as Lydia Riera in the recent Netflix reboot of One Day at a Time.
To close, the festival will screen Dream Horse, starring Collette and Lewis and directed by Euros Lyn. The Bleecker Street film tells a story of a Welsh bartender who ends up breeding and rearing a competitive race hose.
The film will also screen Centigrade as its Midnight Horror Special. The movie, which can already be streamed on Hulu, stars Vinceint Piazza. The documentary My Octopus Teacher, available on Netflix, will screen as the festival’s Centerpiece Film, and filmmakers James Reed and Pippe Ehrlich will be awarded the Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking Award by the festival.
But beyond the programming itself, the mere fact the festival will happen is welcome news to area cinephiles. When the pandemic struck last year, with the first East Coast case a patient at Doctors Hospital of Sarasota no less, the festival had to be postponed weeks before its March 27 opening date. The event ended up going fully virtual, running from April 27 to May 3 but screening films and Q&As entirely online with no in-person events.
The festival isn’t abandoning virtual this year and will still stream some content online, allowing for local and national audiences to partake. Famiglio hopes the festival draws attendance of 5,000 to 8,000. “But I’d be happy if 2,500 people showed up,” he said. From various smaller SFF-managed Sarasota Native American Film Festival, organizers know there will demand for tickets for virtual screenings.
Beyond that, this year promises more small gatherings and intimate events, where numbers stay intentionally modest and social distancing will be carefully managed. CineBistro will limit capacity in theaters appropriately based on the rate of coronavirus infections reported at the time of the event. 
Photo courtesy PBS.
The Board of Trustees of The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature announced the Museum’s next Chief Executive Officer. Hillary Spencer will succeed the Museum’s longtime leader, Brynne Anne Besio, who announced her retirement in January.
As eyes across the nation follow the environmental crisis at Piney Point, ecological groups have raised alarms on the impact the pumping of wastewater will have on Tampa Bay and its natural inhabitants. As a collaborative effort with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other organizations, this week, staff from the Chicago Zoological Society’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP) has begun monitoring the dolphins in the area surrounding the gypsum stack spill.
The SDRP is a leading dolphin research organization and has maintained the world’s longest longitudinal study of dolphins in the wild. Through research measures like dolphin surveys and seasonal dolphin prey fish monitoring, the SDRP helps scientists learn about dolphin biology, environmental impacts on their health and reproductive success, their social structure, and the effects of human activities. Applying some of the approaches the team uses with Sarasota Bay’s dolphins to the emerging situation in Tampa Bay, will help with understanding the effects the spill has had on local wildlife.
”We conducted photo-identification research in the area near Port Manatee during 1988-1993, and identified a resident dolphin community adjoining that of Sarasota Bay. Since the discharge began, we have seen many fewer dolphins in the area than we did in our earlier surveys, and they are mostly more than two miles from the discharge site. These findings are preliminary, and the situation is changing daily,” said Randall Wells, director of the SDRP.
The scope of the work remains to be fully defined, temporally and geographically, and depends on how the spill develops. For now, no government funds have been available to cover program expenses. Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation has diverted existing funding to the organization to aid the Tampa Bay efforts and is rallying other donors to make donations.
“Dolphins have been long considered our water-based ecological sentinels—breathing the same air, swimming in the same waters, and eating the same fish we do,” says Teri A Hansen, President|CEO of Barancik Foundation. “If we can identify what effects this crisis has on them, we can better understand what risks it poses for our own health and hope others lend their philanthropic support to this important work.”
In addition to providing essential baseline data for both the conservation of dolphins in the wild and their welfare in zoos, the SDRP will continue to contribute to management actions that help mitigate negative influences humans can have on our marine ecosystems.
The impact CareerEdge continues to make is resounding in 2020 - for every dollar invested in workforce development the return on investment is $4.72. Last year, CareerEdge and its employer partners invested $1.25 million in workforce funding, resulting in $2 million in economic impact for the community from new wages and raises. In 2020, even with the impact of COVID on ourworkforce climate, CareerEdge trained 184 workers and assisted 523 workers in earning raises.
For area high school juniors and seniors who are considering a music degree, local music school Music Compound is offering a workshop with live and virtual options, that will offer great insight into a student’s potential college path. On consecutive Saturdays, April 17 from 10am-12pm and April 24 from 10am to 1 pm, the Navigating Your College Career workshop will address: degree options that are available, such as Classical, Modern and Education as well as best bets for someone interested in working within the industry; audition requirements for each college; audition preparation; networking and follow-up tips; and more.
For the month of March, passenger traffic at the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (SRQ) soared to 277,590 passengers, breaking the all-time record of 255,247 passengers for a single month at the airport. Passenger numbers increased 74% over the previous month of February. Compared to March 2020, passenger traffic was 81% higher than the 2020 level of 153,246.
Safe Children Coalition Inc. was recently the beneficiary of a $55,000 donation from Personalized Estate Liquidation Benefiting Youth, Inc. (PEL). PEL's generous donation to Safe Children Coalition Schoolhouse Link program will support homeless students and youth who are on their own and without a stable place to stay in Sarasota County. This donation will help provide stability to vulnerable youth/young adults with short-term housing subsidies while they pursue their education.
For more than a decade, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe has offered the lively and music-filled fundraiser, its April Fools Fête, to support its education programs. This year, with social events cautiously returning to the scene, WBTT moved the event outdoors to its theatre arts center for a socially-distanced live audience on April 5. WBTT also offered a livestream option so the rest of the community could join the party virtually. Highlights included high-energy performances by WBTT artists and students, testimonials, a paddle raise, and delicious dinner catered by Michael's On East. Approximately $170,000 was raised in support of WBTT's education programs.
Manatee County has an opening for a citizen member on the 2021 Value Adjustment Board which hears appeals regarding denied property tax exemptions, petitions relating to assessments, and appeals concerning ad valorem tax deferrals. Applications are due May 12.
Join New College creative writing professor Dr. Emily Carr for this four-part Zoom workshop series is offered from 5pm to 7pm on the second Wednesday of the month: January 13, February 10, March 10, and April 14. A fee of $95 is required for participation. This includes a copy of the required text, The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life by Jessa Crispin, and all four Zoom sessions. This mixed-genre, all-levels workshop includes a basic introduction to the Tarot, generative writing exercises, storytelling tips and tricks, unique Tarot-inspired provocations for creativity in times of crisis, and a discussion of the various ways writers might use the Tarot in their work. This workshop is open to writers at all levels, working in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Together, we'll explore a series of Tarot-inspired writing activities designed to offer you strategies for using the cards to 1) start a new poem/story/essay 2) inject new life and surprising stakes into a poem/story/essay you're already working on and/or 3) breakthrough imaginative blocks - in this particular historical moment.
In collaboration with the Sarasota Architectural Foundation, the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation and the AIA Gulf Coast Chapter, this exhibit will examine the unique history of architecture in Sarasota from the time of Native Americans to the present and will run from January 12 until April 17, 2021. Timed reservation information will be available soon.
We're happy to report that our popular program, Science Sprouts, for budding scientists ages 2-5 will be returning on January 10 from 10:30 to 11:30am on the second and fourth Sunday of each month. January 10 is "A Waddle of Penguins", January 24 is "All About Opposites", February 14 is "Wonderful Wetlands", February 28 is "Burrow Buddies", March 14 is "Prehistoric Pals", March 28 is "Manatee Mischief", April 11 is "Earth Sweet Home" and April 25 is "Beneficial Bees". Tots can bring their favorite grown-ups to explore and discover in the Mosaic Backyard Universe. Cost is $14 per child for members of the Discovery Society and $18 per child for all others. This includes one adult to accompany each child. Advance reservations are required.
Ringling Museum of Art's video exhibition Real This Time will showcase the work of artists including Bear Witness from April 23 until May 16. During this extraordinary time, video has become the key medium contributing to the public sphere. Video, often captured on cellphones and shared through social media, exposes social justice issues and matters of civic life to a global audience. For Real This Time features video-based works that examine the current state of American society and pose uncomfortable yet vital questions about personal and collective attitudes toward issues of race and inequality. The exhibition is presented in a sequence of individual screenings. Each work brings to light narratives of systemic racism and offers a unique inquiry that evokes historical exchange to illustrate the expansiveness of the issues affecting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) today. For Real This Time opens up a space for deeper reflection on the common experience of resilience across cultures in order to create a shift in our psyches that inspires tangible and effective change.
The dream of one man became a cultural tour de force for Sarasota’s performing arts community. In 1999, actor and playwright Nate Jacobs founded the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe, establishing a unique dramatic company to present and explore the Black experience. After twenty years of challenges and hard-won triumphs, the troupe experienced one of its toughest years yet in 2020. The killing of George Floyd ignited a national reckoning on race, and the COVID-19 pandemic made theatres go dark. Drawing on the resilient spirit that carried the troupe across previous hardships, WBTT has reimagined ways to stage its performances and fulfill its mission to promote inclusion and diversity in the arts. As a new generation of artists comes onboard, the troupe also finds successful approaches to address racism and lift others up through opportunity, mentorship and outreach. Produced by WEDU PBS in partnership with the Community Foundation of Sarasota County with generous funding from the George J. & Alice Pugh Donor Advised Fund. The film is available at https://www.wedu.org/shows/documentaries/this-light-of-mine/
Between the Sky and the Water is a mid-career retrospective of Janaina Tschäpe (b. Munich, Germany 1973) that will run from December 14 through May 2. Tschäpe’s wide-ranging oeuvre is visually connected by a lexicon of forms that array across a variety of media—painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, photography, video, and performance. These varied articulations of her core concepts comprise a holistic cosmology, a gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art), a grand evolutionary opera where each piece plays a supporting role, subsumed by the totality of the body. Recurring themes persist—Kafkaesque metamorphosis and transformation, a feminist resistance to the perpetual policing of the female body, a collapsing of scale undifferentiating the grand cosmos from the infinitesimal cellular, an excavation of the nature of landscape—but always, most importantly, is an exploration of painting as a way of understanding the world. Travelling from deep sea to land to space, the terrain is constantly shifting and yet the same, like a creature tropically and symbiotically adapting to whatever environment they find themselves inhabiting. Atmospherically sliding between the figurative and the abstract, the work invites your eye to travel, free of regard for chronology, or need of narrative.
Welcome to the 30th Anniversary Season at the Sarasota Polo Club beginning Sunday December 13th, 2020 thru Sunday April 25th, 2021. Sunday Polo matches are open to the public every Sunday at 1pm beginning December 13th, 2020 through April 25th, 2021. Gates open at 10am. Fieldside general admission tailgating, reserved midfield premium seating or VIP midfield boxes are available for Sunday Polo. Children 12 and under are free, (general admission tailgating). Exciting polo action, opening parade, live national anthem, theme weeks, half-time entertainment, food, drinks, and divot-stomping. Dress comfortably and for the weather. Remember, you will be walking on the grass. Well socialized dogs are welcome on a leash.
Sarasota Polo Club
The exhibition features over a dozen projects that exemplify Abbott’s unique climate and site-based perspective on living in harmony with one’s environment and will run from November 8, 2020 through April 25. Using his Bayou Studio as the epicenter of Abbott’s creative inquiry, the exhibition shows how key concepts developed in the experimental atelier space find physical form in his built projects, whether commissioned or conceived with a prescribed program. Nature is at the heart of Carl Abbott’s creative practice. All of his gestures — however small or grand — exemplify Abbott’s committed ethic and aesthetics, his site-based perspective on living in harmony with one’s environment. While some belief systems posit a “man” v. “nature” sensibility, Abbott’s cosmology understands human beings to be of nature. He thus shapes space, physically and conceptually, to serve nature’s—our—needs, in terms of comfort and shelter, but most importantly, in terms of one’s enrichment and enhancement of life. This exhibition aims to elucidate the art of architecture, examining origin stories, early influences and how the visual environment shaped Abbott’s “ways of seeing”. We hope to bring alive the practice of architecture as an artistic pursuit, a humanistic discipline, and a way to reunite with nature. The exhibition arrays over three areas on the Museum Campus: La Musa Azul – a site-responsive meditation grove located in the Marcy & Michael Klein Plaza, Exant/Extinct – a spotlight exhibition in the historic portion of the Wendy G. Surkis & Peppi Elona Lobby, and The Bayou Studio – a mini-retrospective in the Claire H. Rusen Gallery.
Fill your shopping bags for the week every Sunday, November through April, 10am to 2pm at the Farmers’ Market at Lakewood Ranch. Located in the parking lot of Lakewood Ranch Medical Center. Available products include seafood, milk, cheese, bread, butter, cold-pressed juices, jams & pickled deliciousness, fresh pasta, ready-to-eat foods, honey, soap, truffle oils, mushrooms, popcorn, gulf sea salt, and knife sharpening.
Lakewood Ranch Medical Center
The Ringling is pleased to announce a new exhibition of the work of Sam Gilliam. The exhibition, which is being drawn primarily from local collections and features work from the early 1970s to 2010, will run February 21, 2021 through August 15, 2021. Sam Gilliam is one of the most important abstract artists working today. He will have a career retrospective, at the age of 87, in 2022 at the Smithsonian Institution Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Known for his experimental exploration of materials and constant invention, Gilliam first came to critical attention in the 1960s as a later member of the Washington Color School artists. To emancipate his art from constraints, Gilliam infused his appreciation of blues and jazz improvisation to be conceptualized in abstraction. His radical freedom to express spontaneity when working with materials created the first of his important "drape" paintings in the late 1960s that he would continue to explore throughout his career. By removing the canvas from the traditional stretcher, Gilliam created innovative work that was both painting and sculpture. His installation of the "drape" works filled galleries with painted canvases suspended off the walls or from the ceilings and often draped over objects such as sawhorses or ladders. These pieces encouraged improvisation because they could not be hung in the same manner twice.
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