By KATY BERGEN
SARASOTA — Kiara Mitchell and Teithis Miller were in a school assembly last year when they first heard about the chance to make a movie. The Sarasota Film Festival wanted students to produce a movie for the international event as part of a pilot film academy at the visual and performing arts high school.
Later, student broadcasters mentioned the opportunity again on the school news, and Mitchell and Miller said they knew then that they wanted in. It was an overwhelming idea, Miller said, even if he thought he might already be interested in music and film.
Jonathan Buckley, Wade Turner, Deja DuBose, Kiara Mitchell, Teithis Miller photographed in the Motion Design Department at Brooker High School on Tuesday, April 7, 2015. The group created "Newtown at 100: A Glimpse Through Our Eyes," which will be shown on April 16th at the Sarasota Opera House during the Sarasota Film Festival. (Herald-Tribune staff photo by Nick Adams)
“It was being able to go out and film and also knowing that it was something you could put on your resume — we directed a film,” Miller, 16, said.
Now, he says, it’s bigger than he ever imagined.
On Thursday, a culmination of 10 months of work for five Booker High School filmmakers will debut at the Sarasota Opera House during the city’s annual film festival. Starting last summer, Miller, Mitchell and fellow students Wade Turner, Deja DuBose and Jonathan Buckley interviewed Newtown residents for a documentary about the past, present and future of the predominantly African-American neighborhood that has endured and prevailed here for 100 years.
The film academy was an experiment funded through grass-roots efforts by festival organizers and Booker High faculty who wanted to bring a film program back to the county’s visual and performing arts school.
Now, as the Booker students attend fittings for their first red-carpet premiere, festival organizers are preparing to announce that the Booker High film academy will likely become a fixture, thanks to a donation from a private donor.
The contribution, donated by retired Tervis Tumbler chairman Norbert Donelly after he heard about the program at a community event, will pay for equipment as a well as an adjunct professor to teach students who will continue to produce films for the festival.
A still from "Newtown at 100: A Glimpse Through Our Eyes."
“What we thought was going to be a mini-project kept going,” said festival development director Charlie Ann Syprett, who worked with judge and filmmaker Charles Williams, Booker High Principal Rachel Shelley and festival board president Mark Famiglio to launch the program this past summer.
Williams will also be the first recipient of the “Poitier Family Award,” created to honor those who “promote cross-cultural understanding through film.”
The award is named for Sidney Poitier, who in 1964 became the first African-American to win an Academy Award. Members of his family are expected to attend the festival this year.
Williams, a circuit court judge in Sarasota, produced the 2010 award-winning film “Through the Tunnel,” which explored the desegregation of Manatee Schools through the Lincoln and Manatee High football teams.
The real Newtown
Members of the Poitier family will attend the “Newtown at 100: A Glimpse Through Our Eyes” premiere and present Williams with the award, festival program director Michael Dunaway said last week.
It remains uncertain whether Sidney Poitier, at 88, will make the trip, though a flight and hotel room have been booked for him.
The establishment of the Booker High School film academy will be officially announced this week, but Mitchell has already heard whispers at school about the program. An administrator pulled her aside in the hallway last week and asked her if she would do the film academy again if it returned next year.
Mitchell said she smiled — her suspicions piqued — and said she would.
The Booker High film academy began in the summer of 2014 after Syprett approached principal Shelley about getting students involved in the festival. The high school had not had a film program for several years.
“I found that to be tragic,” Syprett said. “That the premiere performing arts school in the county didn’t have a film academy.”
Another still from "Newtown at 100: A Glimpse Through Our Eyes."
She solicited donations from community members and groups to purchase editing and video equipment for the students, and hired Riverview High graduate and filmmaker Samuel Curtis to guide them through the process. Williams was also brought in to mentor and check on the students’ progress.
Dunaway praised the students not only for showing filmmaking promise beyond their years, but for pursuing a story that expands upon many residents’ notions of their own community.
This year’s Film Festival opened with the movie “Time Out of Mind,” starring Richard Gere as a person who is homeless. The movie, Dunaway says, aims to put you in front of this man and challenge the viewer to “really truly see him.”
”I think there is an analogy there to Newtown,” Dunaway said. “I think Newtown, for many in Sarasota, is a mysterious, forgotten, not-seen place. And it’s a place with such a rich cultural heritage and is such a hidden treasure.”
That’s what students say they wanted to show about Newtown. The community has been inaccurately correlated with crime, students said matter-of-factly.
Their film would show the “real” Newtown, through their own eyes.
“We realized people who didn’t know anything about Newtown would come and try to drive out,” Mitchell said. “Or they probably just went right on down the highway.”
The big night
But ensuring their film didn’t promote unfair stereotypes was challenging, Turner said. He can’t forget the man who spoke to the team about his brother, killed in Newtown as a result of violence. The story was moving, but it didn’t help their mission of challenging existing assumptions about Newtown.
“Everybody’s story is very important and it reveals details that were really essential,” Turner said. “But in order to obtain the thesis of the film, we had to edit some things out.”
Mostly, when they talk about their experiences, the Booker filmmakers come back to the things they learned.
They had never heard of Overtown, the first African-American neighborhood in Sarasota, near where the Sarasota Military Academy now stands. They didn’t know that Newtown was created partly to move black people further from downtown Sarasota. They were pleased to learn how self-containment led to the sustainment of a community that flourished in the face of adversity, and they feel moved, even if some of them are preparing to graduate.
DuBose has applied and been accepted to a slew of colleges, and thinks she’ll probably be deciding between the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida. Turner is headed to Ringling College of Art and Design to study illustrations and fine arts.
Buckley, also a sophomore, isn’t sure he wants to produce a film again, but he’s certain now that he wants to be on the other side of the camera.
“My whole life it’s come back to (being an actor),” Buckley said. “I’ve always tried to come up with other options but it comes back to that in my mind. I just love pretending, and trying to be other people.”
Miller and Mitchell, both sophomores, said they want to participate in the film academy again next year.
“Our students will have an opportunity to work with a practitioner, someone who has experience with film,” Principal Rachel Shelley said. “That’s what we think will sustain the program.”
Shelley, existing teachers in the school’s motion design department and the new festival instructor will soon work to develop curriculum for the film academy that takes advantage of the new resources while also tying into state standards.
But first, the premiere.
Last week the Booker filmmakers were fitted for their red-carpet outfits. Mitchell, 16, chose a long, royal blue gown with jewels around the waist and sheer sleeves, and Buckley said he is most excited about wearing his new tux. The festival has gifted more than 400 tickets to residents of Newtown to come out for the film debut at the Opera House.
The Booker High School Gospel Choir — which includes Buckley — will perform with Booker alumnae and “American Idol” finalist Syesha Mercado. And a panel featuring Dunaway, Williams and the Oscar-winning producer Caitrin Rogers, is scheduled to discuss the film after its premiere.
Miller says he’s been thinking more about directing, writing a screenplay in his head. Maybe, it’ll be about a single mom struggling to support her kids. She’ll have to get a breakthrough, he said, and there should be a love story element.
He is certain about one thing.
“It’ll have a message that says ‘keep pushing.’”