Tonight is the night! After MONTHS of hard work, we are announcing the Sarasota Film Festival line-up tonight and I have to say, I am really proud of this year's festival program. Not only do we have some amazing artists and their work coming to the festival, but I have been able to work with a great team of people down here to make it all happen. I know it is a little bit self-congratulatory to use this space to pat myself on the back, but hey, after working on this line-up since September, maybe a little trumpeting is in order. Stay tuned for more details and hopefully some pictures from the press launch itself. The announcement is always a big event here in town as sponsors, press and film fans, about 400 people total, attend the press announcement. Sarasota is SERIOUS about its film festival, and that is why this is such a great festival for which to work and why Sarasota such a great community for filmmakers to visit.

In the meantime, one of our filmmakers made a couple of announcements of his own yesterday, so I can say how excited we are to be hosting the Southeast premieres of Michael Tully's Cocaine Angel

and Todd Rohal's The Guatemalan Handshake

both of which will be appearing in our Independent Visions Competition.

I promise not to use this blog for shameless self-promotion, but tomorrow I will go a little more in-depth into the festival line-up and talk about some of my own personal highlights in putting it together. I usually like to use this space for writing about film and my own experience as a film viewer, but I have been so far down the rabbit hole in terms of programming, my own experience has been engulfed in the work required. Obviously, I have not been able to talk about the festival on here, so I have been really holding back (hence the paucity in posting) and I think I can live with a couple of posts about the festival itself. Until tomorrow...