Sidewalk Film Festival announces 2021 schedule - AL.com

Appropriately enough, more than a year into the pandemic, we’ve hit the 10th anniversary of the film “Contagion.” And the annual Sidewalk Film Festival will honor the occasion, according to their newly unveiled full schedule for the event marking its 23rd year in Birmingham.

Sidewalk today announced their opening and closing night selections, special presentations and features for the nationally acclaimed film festival currently set to take place Aug. 23-29.

After pivoting to a drive-in format in 2020 because of the pandemic, Sidewalk will return to theaters this year. Venues include the Sidewalk Cinema, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Alabama Theatre, Birmingham Museum of Art, Boutwell Auditorium, First Church Birmingham and Lyric Theatre. Look at the 2021 festival map.

There will be limited capacity in each venue, but those numbers have not yet been determined.

“We acknowledge that the pandemic is not over and as a result, will be working in partnership with each of the venues we rent to ensure filmmaker, audience, volunteer, and staff safety, with limited capacities, social distancing regulations, and other policies as deemed necessary at the time of the Festival,” the festival website says.

To celebrate the festival’s return to theaters, Sidewalk will host nightly themed spotlights to build an exciting weekend for film fans. The opening night film: Jeff Daniels’ “Television Event.” The closing night film: Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe’s “The Beta Test.” Read the full schedule.

Sidewalk issued a press release noting will feature special roundtables and panels built around “timely classics, beloved films and anniversary screenings,” including Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion,” the omniscient pandemic thriller that almost got too much right about how America would respond in the event it actually happened. The filmed saw renewed online interest and popularity in light of COVID-19.

Other milestone screenings include John Heyn and Jeff Krulik’s “Heavy Metal Parking” Lot and Ridley Scott’s “Thelma & Louise.”

“We will put more emphasis on music as we screen Chris Columbus’ beloved ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ accompanied by a live performance of the film’s score by DJ Hollywood, offer up a Rock n’ Roll Double Feature powered by Mike Plante and Jason Willis’ ‘We Were There to Be There’ and John Heyn and Jeff Krulik’s ‘Blondie: Vivir En La Habana,’ and present three very different secret screenings for audiences’ delight,” the press release said.

Sidewalk’s creative director Rachel Morgan said, “We are beyond excited to be back downtown for Sidewalk 2021! We believe that we’ve crafted a balanced line-up filled with the best, recent, theatre-worthy indie films spanning all genres, along with the occasional throwback and special event. It’s been quite a couple of years and we think the 23rd annual Sidewalk schedule reflects such in a variety of ways -- from provoking thought to celebrating humanity to providing an opportunity for shared commiseration. As always we also have a lot of surprises planned, after all, everyone is overdue for a super fun week (with safety in mind, of course); we hope you’re as excited as we are!”

The themed showcase evenings will begin on Monday with an Alabama Spotlight highlighted by a special program of short films shot and produced in the state or with Alabama as a central theme and focus.

Tuesday will be the Life & Liberty Spotlight, featuring by CJ Hunt’s documentary “The Neutral Ground,” which looks at New Orleans’ fight over Confederate monuments and America’s centuries-long relationship with the Lost Cause.

Wednesday will shine the Spotlight on Shout, their annual LGBTQ showcase, which will feature short films like Anna Andersen and Gabriella Canal’s “No Man’s Land” about a lesbian separatist community in Mentone, Ala.

Thursday puts the focus on the Black Lens Spotlight, including Danny Lyon’s “SNCC, in which the filmmaker utilizes his own photos taken in the 1960s to look at SNCC, one of the most effective grassroots organizations in American history. Through those photos, audio recordings of the songs and music that drove the movement, and interviews with some of SNCC leaders, he tracks the success of the organization in its fight against Jim Crow.

Following the themed showcase evenings ramping up to the weekend, the official opening night selection on Friday, Aug. 27 will be Jeff Daniels’ documentary “Television Event,” which explores the build up to ABC’s broadcast of “The Day After,” a made-for-TV movie about the aftermath of a nuclear war on a small Kansas town. According to Sidewalk, the film was watched by more than 100 million viewers, which made it the highest-rated made-for-TV film in history.

Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe’s “The Beta Test” will serve as the closing night film. The horror-comedy follows a married Hollywood agent, who participates in an anonymous sexual encounter after receiving a purple envelope from an unknown person. The encounter leads him down a rabbit hole filled with lies, cheating and death at the hands of boyfriends, girlfriends and spouses who have been cheated on.

In 2020, Sidewalk made buttered popcorn out of a few rotten kernels, giving us the reasons we needed to go back to the movies. They came up with creative ways to keep us entertained and stay relevant during COVID, with streaming services, pop-up drive-in series, a pivot to a drive-in film festival, smart guidelines for reopening safely, events throughout the year to raise money, also announced as satellite venue for Sundance Film Festival.

The pandemic scrapped festivals of every kind across America, including Sidewalk’s annual even dedicated to independent film in downtown Birmingham. But the big-screen tradition organized by the nonprofit Sidewalk Film Center and Cinema shifted gears in 2020 and transitioned into a drive-in event at The Grand River Drive-In at The Backyard in Leeds. About 150 movies played in on four screens at the outdoor venues in just a few days, including the festival’s standard narrative features and documentaries, plus short films, cartoons and and music videos.

The pandemic challenged Sidewalk organizers who were determined to hold the event and keep moviegoers as safe as possible. The annual festival usually takes place at nearly a dozen indoor venues in downtown Birmingham, including the Alabama and Lyric theaters, and features other live events like parties, Q&A panels, meet & greets and other social and networking opportunities for artists and festival-goers. Sidewalk’s executive director Chloe Cook said organizers didn’t think that doing a scaled-back version of the normal event was reasonable.

The organization also closed the doors of the Sidewalk Film Center and Cinema -- its home on the lower level of the Pizitz building downtown -- due to COVID-19 concerns. The 11,000-square-foot headquarters -- which holds two 95-seat screening venues, two lounges, a bar and concession stand, offices for the Sidewalk staff and an education space -- remained shuttered until August 2020, in time to screen Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” for five weeks. AL.com went back to the movies thanks to Sidewalk, with all the capacity limits, increased cleaning procedures, hand sanitizer stations, mask requirements, changes at the concessions stand and more. The theater has since stayed open, showing movies you couldn’t see anywhere else in Alabama, regardless of a pandemic. And to top it off, they became an official Satellite Screen Partner for Sundance Film Festival 2021.

Adblock test (Why?)