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Sizzling Cinema
FLIFF has a new twist on dinner and a movie
Story and Photos by Mary Damiano
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| Michelle Filippi, special operations coordinator for the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, preparing for Cinema a la Mode. |
Not surprisingly, August 5 was hot enough that you probably could have fried an egg on the sidewalk outside Cinema Paradiso in downtown Fort Lauderdale. It was just the kind of evening to take refuge in a cool movie theatre. But things were cooking inside as well.
More than 100 people turned out that Wednesday for the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival’s (FLIFF) second edition of Cinema a la Mode, a monthly event that combines a cooking class with a movie. The event is the brainchild of Michelle Filippi, special operations coordinator for FLIFF. Filippi began as a FLIFF volunteer but went on staff in January. She wasn’t hired to cook, but when she saw how much money the not-for-profit film fest was spending on food and caterers, she came up with a way to save money and make money at the same time.
“Since I started doing the cooking here, I’ve gotten such good feedback, and people were always asking me how to do this or that, so I said let’s do a cooking class and demo and show a movie with it,” says Filippi. |
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