News

By Thom Smith
      
    Lights, camera — and lots of action.
    But what would you expect at a 20th birthday party for the Palm Beach International Film Festival?
    It seems only yesterday the festival took its first cinematic breaths, as organizers and fans held theirs while waiting for a certain director or actor to confirm — sometimes gasping when they did, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing as stories unfolded on screen.
    The full breadth of emotions no doubt will be on display March 26 at Muvico Parisian 20 at CityPlace in West Palm Beach as festival President Randi Emerman snaps the clapperboard for Welcome to Me. The dark comedy, starring Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack, was directed by PBIFF veteran Shira Piven. Her first feature, Fully Loaded, won “audience favorite” in 2011. An opening party follows at Revolution.
    The festival closes April 2 with Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young, starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose lives are upended by a disarming young couple, played by Amanda Seyfried and Adam Driver.
    In between, fans will be treated to 12 world and 15 U.S. premieres, plus shorts, documentaries, presentations and lots of already and soon-to-be familiar faces.
    In the summer of 1974, Rock Your Baby sold more than 11 million copies. Recorded at the legendary TK Records in Hialeah, it became the first great disco hit and was Rolling Stone’s record of the year. The singer was George McCrae, son of the first African-American cop in West Palm Beach.
    On March 28, the festival will screen The Record Man, which chronicles TK Records and founder Henry Stone. McCrae will be presented the key to West Palm Beach by Mayor Jeri Muoio. Jimmi Bo Horne, another TK artist, also from West Palm Beach, will perform.
    The evening will be a homecoming of sorts for documentary filmmaker Mark Moorman. Before his film Tom Dowd & the Language of Music was nominated for a Grammy and For Once in My Life won the audience award at SXSW, Moorman was a volunteer with the Palm Beach festival.
    More music: A candid documentary, Nat King Cole: Afraid of the Dark, is set for March 30 at Muvico Parisian 20. The famous singer’s daughters Timolin and Casey Cole will attend the screening and a reception.