Last year, the first Subculture Film Festival in West Palm Beach billed itself as the “Reel Revolution” in Palm Beach County, showcasing local and international cinema – from eclectic music documentaries to underground scenes of the war in Ukraine.
This was an attempt to foster a stronger filmmaking community, one that attempts to prevent talent from leaving the state for better opportunities.
The second editionSubculture Film Festival try to do the same.
He focuses his wide-angle lens on filmmakers from the three counties through stories about art, immigration and cinematic creativity. The themes serve as centerpieces for mixed screenings, ranging from animation and experimental films to short documentaries and feature films.
“We’re just exposing the audience to different cultures, different political issues, hoping that it sparks some sort of curiosity about what’s going on,” Noelia Solange, the new co-director and programmer, told WLRN. She said the festival also “fills a void for budding filmmakers.”
Solange and co-director Jose Jesus Zaragoza combed through hundreds of submissions before selecting 72 films for the three-day screenings, Friday through Sunday at the Norton Museum of Art and Afflux Studios at G-Star High School of the Arts .
The film festival will feature live music, various workshops and panel discussions on the craft of filmmaking.
“It’s about providing that platform where filmmakers from all three counties can come together and hopefully create future projects together,” Solange said. “It really is the ultimate vision.”
Palm Beach County Film Commissioner Michelle Hillery is expected to moderate the panel on “Women in Film.”
![West Palm Beach artist and curator Carol Strict holds a letter/artwork sent to her by an inmate | Ask Her About Art is the debut documentary from West Palm Beach native Karim Dakkon.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6aa94ad/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1080+0+0/resize/880x495!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3b%2Ffa%2Fa515305349b78285e7ac12d1a6bf%2Fprison-art-last-gallery-carol-knotts.png)
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Solange said their programming aims to put on workshops and films that challenge people and “that can resonate with everyone.”
The opening night film, Ask him about art, West Palm Beach native Karim Dakkon’s first documentary kicks off the festival Saturday at the Art after darkprogram at the Norton Museum of Art.
The true-style documentary follows West Palm Beach artist and curator Carol Strict and her family, Dakkon’s longtime neighbors, who collect prison art to showcase and humanize people serving time in person.
“Being forgotten is like being in the grave,” artist Roger Pitts explains in the documentary. He is a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder.
Strict sells its prison artwork at galleries across the country and passes the profits on to inmates so they can purchase art supplies and other resources.
“They still exist. They’re somewhere,” Dakkon said. “But society has done such a good job of separating people that we kind of forget that they’re still human beings in a whole other world that we don’t like to pay attention to.”
The film screening will be followed by a panel session with Strict and Dakkon at the Norton Museum as well as a prison art exhibit in the Korman Room.
![Benediksyon//Bendicion by Paolo Cesti explores the dichtomy between Christian faith and American immigration.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/fd33d06/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1080+0+0/resize/880x495!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F95%2F96%2F38862dc540bdb6f32d7d234b97d0%2Fbenediksyon-06dc-horizontalthumbnail.jpg)
Themes linked to immigration are strongly present in the festival.
Benediksyon//Bendicionis a “comparison about the role that faith (plays) in the immigration process of becoming a citizen of the United States of America and leaving one’s country of origin,” said director Paolo Cesti, a Cuban- First generation American from Miami.
“I think about my own parents and they both have a pretty astute connection to religion, to Christianity, to Catholicism,” Cesti said.
Cesti’s documentary, which means “blessing” in Haitian Creole and Spanish, probes this “religious structure” and the “link between religious faith and the faith one must have in oneself to leave one’s country of origin.” .
It follows two people migrating to Florida “on the basis of faith”: Marcel, a Haitian priest who eventually builds a church in Homestead. And Julio, a Guatemalan immigrant from Homestead, who describes his heartbreaking story of finding his place in the area.
![Monarcas, by Peruvian immigrant and Miami-based filmmaker Diana Larrea, takes viewers through the wage theft of day laborers and their battle with the immigration court system.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/5ec93eb/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2550x1350+0+0/resize/880x466!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa8%2F55%2F10e0a6004348b5ee44f62f1e7c52%2Fmonarcas-film-by-diana-larrea-02.jpg)
Monarchs, by Diana Larrea, a Peruvian immigrant and Miami-based filmmaker, explores a similar theme of human migration. Ordered by Oolite’s “Pass the mic initiative, Larrea’s documentary chronicles the daily lives of two undocumented Guatemalan day laborers in Homestead who joined an advocacy organization to fight wage theft in the courts.
The film is named after migrating monarch butterflies — “a symbol of migration because they don’t need a visa to cross borders,” Larrea told WLRN.
Larrea, who raises butterflies, said migrants fighting against wage theft against their agricultural and construction bosses are undergoing “personal transformation” and “metamorphosis” because they have to “transform just to know their rights “.
The film shows “the dignity and how much these guys have changed,” Larrea said. “Because they are leaders and they show other immigrants their rights.”
IF YOU ARE GOING TO:
WHEN: The Subculture Film Festival in West Palm Beach runs from Friday, October 20 to Sunday, October 22.
WHERE: Norton Museum of Art and Afflux Studios at G-Star High School of the Arts
Learn more: Opening Night Tickets at the Norton Museum of Art and weekend tickets for films at Gstar’s Afflux Studios (tickets)
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