Sun-Ray Cinema in Jacksonville’s Five Points area is having its first-ever Sleeping Giant film festival, which runs through Sunday.
Visitors can expect screenings of everything from horror movies to westerns. Some of the movies showing at the four-day festival include: “The Unknown,” “Serial Mom,” “Rat Film,” “Donnie Darko,” “The Void,” “Dark Side of Dr. Suess” and “Tampopo.”
Sun-Ray Cinema is known for showing films that are not often found in more mainstream movie theaters, and the Sleeping Giant Fest continues that mission, said co-owner Shana David-Massett. She said the festival’s name comes from the idea that sometimes lesser-known movie gems get overlooked in such a large city.
“Jacksonville is a sleeping giant of a city, right. But if we don’t all leave our houses and get out and explore the world, then we’re asleep. We wanna let people know that there are a lot of things going on here, and we want them to come out,” she said.
David-Massett said the four-day festival includes art displays, movie-themed food offerings, live performances of music scores from “Twin Peaks” and “The Unknown,” and a chat with a famous director about his film “Serial Mom”.
“Our big spotlight event is John Waters doing a live director’s commentary that we call ‘The Talkies,’ but then there’s 39 other events,“ she said.
Sun-Ray co-owner Tim Masset said he is excited to display some of his favorite hand-painted movie posters during the fest. The posters come from the Chicago-based Deadly Prey Gallery.
“The Ghana Movie Poster Show involves the posters that were produced by artists of video clubs that popped up in Ghana in the 90s, and the artists paint directly on stitched together flour sacks,“ he said.
He said some of the artists created the posters without ever seeing the movies. Some of the films depicted on the posters include “Indiana Jones,” “Snakes on a Plane,” “Dracula” and “Anaconda.” Massett said the posters were an inspiration for the theme of the Sleeping Giant Fest. The posters will be available for purchase at the event.
Contact Amy Hadden at newsteam@wjct.org or on Twitter at @AmyNHadden.
