Back to the Future
Rewind/Fast Forward Festival Offers Rare Glimpse Into the Past

By Jan Engoren

Enlarged frames from 1962’s Di Franco Boat Ride, one of the films that will be screened at the Rewind/ Fast Forward Film and Video Festival, August 24-26.

Attention film students and film buffs: The Rewind/Fast Forward Film and Video Festival is back for its sixth year, showcasing its unique collection of moving images from South Florida. On Friday through Sunday, August 24-26, you can see some of these interesting images, restored Hollywood films and home movies.  The festival is free and open to the public.

What makes this film festival different from other film festivals? The Rewind/Fast Forward Film and Video Festival, the first of its kind in the country, explores all facets of documentary filmmaking and film and video preservation.

Where else can you see a 5-minute short from the 1920s of George Eastman, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison sitting, talking and drinking iced tea in white suits? This is the only color footage of Thomas Edison in existence.

“We are unique among film festivals,” says Barron Sherer, the festival director and curator for the Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive.  “We have a regular fan base of film buffs that come year after year because they know they will see interesting films that they can’t see elsewhere.”

The Rewind/Fast Forward Film and Video Festival showcases local film and television history and makes use of archival images in new productions, including many that utilize footage from the Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive. The archive is home to the largest collection (after the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.) of archival and historical footage of Miami and its environs and provides footage to Hollywood filmmakers and documentarians.

For example, the movies The Notorious Bettie Page, the “pinup sensation that shocked the nation” about one of the first modern pin-up models in the mid-1950s, the 1989 Oscar-winning film, Born on the 4^th of July, starring Tom Cruise, and the 2006 documentary movie, Cocaine Cowboys, about the heyday of Miami as the cocaine capital of the United States, all contain archival footage of the Miami and Miami Beach of the past, retro images of a gentler, slower time that exist now in people’s memories and that live on in the Florida Moving Image Archive, housed in the Miami-Dade Public Library.

Barron Sherer, festival director and curator for the Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive

The mission of the archive is to restore and preserve old film.  Local Miami TV stations, such as WTVJ, have donated all their footage and moving images from 1950 through 1977 to the archive. Once the footage is donated, it becomes available to the public. Filmmakers and documentary filmmakers request this footage to include as period pieces in their films, such as the scenes in Bettie Page where she returns to visit the photographer Bunny Yeager in Miami Beach, or the documentary footage of Miami in the 1980s in Cocaine Cowboys and the scene of the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami Beach in Born on the 4^th of July.

Filmmakers and costume and production designers for films often request footage to get a true-to-life picture of the fashions, hairstyles, clothes, cars and neighborhoods of that era.

In addition to the historical footage of Miami, the archive houses old home videos that have been donated by local residents. Many of these videos come from old the Miami Movie Makers Club members, who used to meet, to make and discuss films and chronicle a different time in a sleepier Miami. The club was active from 1949 through the early 1990s. The archive currently houses 11 million feet of film, including home movies from this club.

The original movie poster for 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven

Phyllis Le Shane is one of the residents who has donated films to the archive. She will screen her film, Ollie, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Ollie is one of a series of films Le Shane made during the 1960s and 1970s starring neighborhood kids in her adaptation of classic tales. The novice filmmaker created full productions, complete with scenic locations, makeup and costumes.

“We have a mission to preserve film,” says Sherer.  “In the past 10 years, restoring films has become a growth industry.  People can now see an economic value to restoring all films. We have no sponsorships for the festival. We are funded by grants and all the money is on the screen. We hope to raise awareness and preserve the history and heritage of Miami for posterity.”

The festival opens on Friday night, August 24, with a restored Technicolor print of the 1945 color film noir Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney. The film tells the story of the ravishing, wealthy and insanely jealous Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) who promptly dumps her fiancé (Vincent Price) when she meets novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde). Leave Her to Heaven won the Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography, and Tierney was nominated for Best Actress. This is one of the most memorable films from the 1940s, and is worth seeing not only for the storyline and beautiful scenery, but to see the restored print in all its former glory. Colors have been restored to their original hues and the audience today will be seeing the exact film that moviegoers saw on opening night in Times Square in 1947.

Jonas Mekas, one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the “New American Cinema,” as he dubbed it in the late 1950s. His 1966 film, Notes for Jerome, will be screened Sunday, August 26 at 1 p.m.

On Saturday morning, another restored print, 3:10 to Yuma, will be screened. This 1957 western stars Glenn Ford and Van Heflin in a battle of wills and guns.

“This is a no-frills film festival,” says Sherer.  “It is a curated festival, whereby I select the films to be shown. It’s quirky, educational, arty and fun.  I hope to attract and bring together different segments of the population, as well as film students. We are a one-of-a-kind film festival.”

Sherer, 40, a filmmaker and graduate of the University of South Carolina Film School, became intrigued with preserved and restored films and the new art of reappropriating old footage and creating new meaning and stories from old images. This art of reappropriating old film clips and using them in new ways is an emerging art form and will be a highlight of this year’s festival.

This topic of found footage and avant-garde filmmaking will be the subject of the “Clips and Conversation” evening with Mark Boswell, a filmmaker and teacher at the Pratt Institute in New York City. Boswell will speak on Novo-Kino, which traces the cinematic and theoretical history of found-footage filmmakers and present a linear history of this art form in the making.

Boswell explains that this movement to appropriate and create new images from recycled film grew out of the Dadaist art movement of the 1920s where artists such as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray reclaimed old art and found objects for new visions and from early Soviet era “agit-prop” (agitation/propaganda) films, which were in the forefront of this movement.

“These filmmakers, and the American filmmaker Bruce Conner, paved the way for MTV and the video generation,” says Boswell, Sherer is an admirer of this genre and art form and he himself is a found footage and experimental filmmaker.

Lobby card for 3:10 to Yuma, starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin

“I came to Miami in 1991 and my only knowledge of Miami was Don Johnson and Miami Vice,” says Sherer.  “After watching hundreds of home movies from Miami and local TV footage of the area, I consider myself an historian of old Miami, and an expert on Florida’s recent history. This festival is for everyone and especially people who love film and want to see some amazing rare film footage.”

Other highlights of the weekend include:  “Harris vs. Castro: Fact vs. Fiction” a presentation of the lawsuit against Fidel Castro brought by a Miami-businessman after his company based in Cuba was nationalized.  Two films will be shown:  a factual version (a compilation of local Miami television news footage) and a fictionalized version, from Jack Webb's “Dragnet” television program, 'General Electric True.' The episode, “Harris vs. Castro” aired in October 1963.

The Rewind/Fast Forward Film and Video Festival runs August 24-26.  For more information , please call 305-375-1505 and fmia.org.