![]() ![]() “We spent the first three years getting our feet wet and figuring everything out, and then in 2015, the fourth year of the festival, we introduced the Critics’ Focus program, where we invite two of the nation’s top film critics to curate the opening and closing film events,” Tuckman explains. And what started out as a fairly small, locally-focused grassroots event has grown global in the years since. ![]() Why would a city almost 4,000 miles away from the land of baguettes, berets and Beaujolais host such a specific, esoteric event, one almost guaranteed to have a list of expenses larger than the size of Richmond’s erudite Francophile population? It turned out the French Embassy was providing a stipend, and Christian took this news as a kind of challenge: if Richmond could secure enough funding to make a French film festival financially viable, surely he could figure out a way to bring a film festival to South Florida’s creative hub.Įnter Michael Tuckman, programming director of the Key West Film Festival, who just happened to know a thing or two about film distribution and festival programming and was more than happy to spend a week watching movies in Key West (see our interview with Tuckman on Page A4 for more background on the man behind the magic). of a global translation services company in Washington, Christian learned that nearby Richmond, Virginia was hosting a film festival - a French film festival, to be specific. It was, strangely, the French embassy that convinced him to risk everything. From one angle, the plan had legs: Key West was a relatively cultured tourist town, so why wouldn’t people travel to paradise to watch movies? On the other hand, Key West was already known as an extraordinarily expensive place to buy a con leche, never mind start a business, and the town’s schedule of special events was already oversaturated. He wasn’t even sure it was financially feasible. It seems impossible now, but eight years ago, Christian had no idea he would one day be lauded as the founder and chairman of such a successful event. Over 30 scheduled feature-length films will screen throughout the long weekend, along with dozens of short films and cultural events spread across the festival’s five-day run from Nov. An opening night reception at the Audubon House will follow the 3½-hour-long film. Collins and Jen Yamato of the Los Angeles Times. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair and preceded by a discussion with Mr. opening night showing of Martin Scorsese’s epic gangster drama “The Irishman” at the Tropic Cinema on Wednesday, Nov. The schedule is packed, beginning with a 5 p.m. This year, as a result of his optimism and doggedness, the Key West Film Festival will celebrate its eighth birthday, with a lineup of star-studded films, parties, panel discussions, awards ceremonies and celebrity appearances. To justify his fugue, he developed a crazy, artsy plan - the kind of plan that has attracted dreamers and those fleeing the cold to Key West for decades: Christian decided to start a film festival in the Southernmost town. The Key West Film Festival is the brainchild of Brooke Christian, who had been cooking up a plan to quit his job and move to a tropical island for a while, fueled by years of vacationing in Key West to visit his father, the late Wayne Kruer, a longtime resident and star local attorney. ![]()
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