Liberty City Goes to France: Borscht Film Chosen to Show at Cannes

Back in February, we awarded the Borscht Film Festival a Mastermind genius grant of $1,000. We're happy to announce the money was put to good use. Lucas Leyva, minister of the interior for Borscht, reports that the cash helped them pay the costs to get two CCCV shorts submitted to Cannes 2010. (The CCCV Stories are the series of films Borscht commissioned with the help of the Miami World Cinema Center.) One was "Velvet" by Peter Glanz and the other was "Day N Night Out" written by Tarell Alvin McCraney and directed by Leyva.

Well, file it under money well spent: "Day N Night Out" has been chosen to premiere in Cannes's Short Film Corner showcase. The short film is the story of a teenager in Liberty City and is set in 1992, the day before Hurricane Andrew hits Miami.

McCraney's family were some of the early Bahamian settlers in Coconut Grove. He was raised in Liberty City, but has since become an established playwright. He's already had three plays show in London, he won a New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award last year, and he has a master's from the Yale School of Drama and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton.  

You may have seen the rough cut of "Day N Night Out" at the 2009 Borscht Film Festival but according to Leyva, the film has morphed since then. McCraney did some rewrites, more footage was shot in Liberty City, the audio was remixed, and Leyva gave the film what he calls a "skip-bleach" (i.e. more stylized) look.

Leyva says the Cannes showcase "is symbolic of Borscht's mission to tell distinct Miami stories, on a professional level, to the world. It shows that there is an international audience for work about Miami."

Here, here. Now let's figure out a way to fly these Borscht folks to France next month. Have you seen what a flight from MIA to Nice Côte d'Azur Airport costs these days? The Festival de Cannes runs from May 12 - 23.