Amy Warren, LMHC / WQ Mag Columnist's Blog – April 2011 Archive (10)

Photo 2010 Sarasota Open by WQmag.com

Once again, world class tennis returns to Sarasota with the Sarasota Open, a USTA/ATP professional tournament. Qualifying rounds will be played April 23rd through April 25th when the main draw begins. The main draw continues throughout the week until the semi-finals begin on…

Photo by K.Conner WQmag.com

With 10.45 hours of each day influenced by media, females are influenced by stereotypes and hypersexualization. Fewer than one in three characters in movies with speaking parts are female. G-rated films depict females in  provocative attire, much like  R-rated films.  For girls, the number one-ranked…

Photo by K.Conner Wqmag.com

After ten days of non-stop action, the Sarasota Film Festival came to a screeching halt. As life returns to normal, there is a quiet void for those of us who voraciously partook of the festival and it seems as if an important part of life in Sarasota has come to an end for an entire year.…

Sarasota Film Festival's Cinema Tropicale Celebration at the Sarasota Yacht Club was quite the celebration, giving  filmmakers a perfect introduction to our beautiful community. Film-lovers enjoyed spectacular views and food while mingling and dancing the night away. Now this event was the kind of party for which the Sarasota Film Festival is known! The parties continue this weekend with Friday's Night Under a Thousand Stars -  Beach Edition at the Ritz-Carlton Member Beach Club and…

Re-visit local history with Thursday’s screening of “Through the Tunnel.”  The film tells the story of the Lincoln High Trojans, the football team of the former Manatee County School for African American students prior to desegregation in 1969. When the young men of Lincoln High were integrated into Manatee High to form a single, powerhouse program, head Coach Eddie Shannon was their guide, leading his team beyond the ignominy thrust upon the team by the challenges of…

I remember the early years of the film festival when seats were empty and directors solicited people to fill the theatre for their film. But times have changed.  These days, virtually every theatre is filled to capacity. The full theatres mean good news for more than just the filmmakers. Popular demand is resulting in additional screenings being added for some of the sold-out films. So if there is a “sold out” film you’d like to see or a film just doesn’t meet your schedule, check again.…

Narrative Feature Competition: Kinyarwanda

“Kinyarwanda” gets my vote as one of the top contenders in Sarasota Film Festival’s narrative feature competition. Inspired by true stories, “Kinyarwanda” entwines six different stories within one film, giving a face to those affected by the Rwanda genocide. Over a million men, women and children…

War is hard, and sometimes coming home is even harder. K. Lorrel Manning’s film, “Happy New Year,” is the fictionalized story of Sgt. Cole Lewis, a marine who returns from Iraq paralyzed. Without available beds in the Veteran’s Hospital, Lewis is assigned to the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wing of the under-staffed, rundown hospital.  After initial anger…

If you’ve ever thought that anything “green” is environmentally friendly, think again. Laura Israel’s documentary “Windfall” tackles the subject of wind energy from the personal viewpoints of residents affected by it. The prospect of leasing land to developers for the erection of wind turbines, an energy-efficient alternative to electricity, initially seemed…

Documentary Feature Competition:  Better This World

sarasota film festival

Justice and injustice, loyalty and disloyalty, power and the abuse of power, manipulation, right and wrong, ethics and integrity…these are the topics that viewers are likely to ponder long…