Arts briefs

‘Summer of Soul’ wins Audience Favorite for Homer DocFest

The Homer Documentary Film Festival announced its annual awards for films shown at the festival. Winning are “Summer of Soul” for Audience Award, “Fabulous Fungi” for the Jury Award and “Der Bar in Mir” for the Director’s Award.

“The most popular of the movies was ‘Summer Of Soul,’” DocFest co-organizer Jamie Sutton wrote in an email announcing the winners. “The music was vibrant and so intimate, yet broad in its origins and appeal. But the triumph was that this movie captured the moment in Black History when the emergence of assurance and Black Pride, standing straight and strong and unwilling to take the presumptuousness of American historical attitude.”

“Fabulous Fungi” was a close second for the Audience Award and won the Jury Award.

“It was a truly impactful presentation. The comments universally praised the power of its message and the immediate effect that it had. Everyone commended that it changed the way they saw the world,” Sutton wrote. “ That is a pretty impressive accomplishment.”

Of “Der Bar in Mir,” Sutton wrote, “We wanted to applaud a filmmaker who came to our home and made such a revealing and instructive movie about the remarkable Brown Bears from just over there. Some commentators thought that one should not get so intimate with the beasts in mother nature. It sets a bad example. I thought that the respect and caution and distance was all in balance and I learned a lot.”

Sutton wrote that audience attendance was down by about half from previous festivals.

“We missed seeing a lot of friends who felt uncomfortable about coming in these days. Even our insistence that those who came to the 2 p.m. shows had to be vaccinated and show a card did not do it for many of the more cautious,” he wrote. “These are tough times for movie festivals and our friends and for many presenters that cannot overcome widespread anxiety. Next Year!”

HCOA holds writers reading

The Homer Council on the Arts holds at 6:30 p.m. today a live reading by some of the winners from the 2020 Kenai Peninsula Writers’ Contest. The reading is free, and face masks are required. Capacity is limited to 20 attendees.

Tags: ,