Lauren Wolkstein

FILMS GONE WILD: Singing the praises of the truly great Florida Film Festival: Claire Carré ; doing the jury thing and talking to Billy Crudup for an hour

that attention to detail and/or the prioritization as to where that attention to detail should be focused routinely comes from the top. And this is where I have to give a big nod to Executive Director David Schillhammer, Programming Director Matthew Curtis, and Programming Coordinator Tim Anderson. Those positions are fraught with epic headache-inducing crises and tough judgment calls, and thankless task after thankless task. And David, Matthew, and Tim, managed to both do whatever they had to do to command their film festival ship and heard the cats that are the filmmakers, jury members, patrons, sponsors, film fans, etc. quite obviously have good film programming chops, and also display poise befitting Mr. Roarke from “Fantasy Island.”

TEN MOST RECENT FILMS WATCHED: Showcasing Dorie Barton ‘s GIRL FLU: From DIFF to EARTHxFilm to the Florida Film Festival from Films Gone Wild

From film festival to film festival, I wrapped up the Dallas International Film Festival, immediately went into the brand new EARTHxFilm festival (both of which I am the publicist for), and from there headed directly to the Florida Film Festival, where I had been asked to be on the Narrative Jury. So, the film choices were laid out for me, and I happily took them in…