In 2003, students at the New World School of the Arts high school in downtown Miami started an inter- disciplinary student film and art festival called “UnMinced.”
When the core of the UnMinced Festival graduated in 2005, they found that despite studying their art at some of the top programs in the country, the people the vibe the work just wasn’t the same. There seemed to be something special in the muggy air, and to keep their community intact and perhaps even expand it by inviting all young Miami artists, the idea of Borscht was born.
Despite the majority of the students leaving Miami to study their art elsewhere, the young filmmakers continued to collaborate in the creation of short films during their winter and summer breaks in Miami. Unfortunately, there was no infrastructure in place to support their development, nor were any local festivals interested in showcasing their work.
The group of filmmakers founded the Borscht Film Festival as a way to showcase their work and provide structure to their collaborations. It was conceived as a venue to share locally what they had learned nationally, continuing the spirit of collaboration and enriching the cultural soil from which they sprung while helping build upon their community.
In 2005, the students- playwrights, actors, designers, filmmakers, architects, painters, musicians, dancers, choreographers, poets and more- were inspired by films like “The Five Obstructions” and “9.11.01” challenged each other with specific obstructions in the creation of short films centered around a given theme.
The commissioned films, as well as other films submitted from the community, were premiered at the actual event. The event itself offers free tickets and is held at a different iconic Miami venue each year. The venues themselves are often transformed or reawakened in some way.
The first Borscht Film Festival took place on December 30th, 2005 at the Miami Shores Performing Arts Theater, and celebrated its birth through the theme of death and destruction: Apocalypse. It was hosted by a fully-functional robot named Paris Hilton, and the event sold out.
None of the films were very good.
Little is known about the 2006 Borscht Film Festival, other than the fact that the theme was Time. Adding to the mystery is ancient graffiti found in the Miami Circle reading “Borscht 2006 will return.”
Borscht 2007: sp ace, took place on August 2nd, 2007 at the Miami Museum of Science Planetarium. It was hosted by Ham the Chimp, and god, and encourage audience members to bring sleeping bags and blankets to watch the films under the artificial stars. The event sold out.
The theme was sp ace, and again featured commissioned work by the group of young filmmakers, which had now expanded to include many more Miami transplants living in New York or elsewhere.
While most of the films were bizzare little projects, shorts like “The Room” by the Meza Brothers, “Blindspot” by Norah Solorzano and “The Toners” by Marco Ramirez went on to win awards and find success at other festivals.
The 2008 Borscht festival was held at the Tower Theater in Little Havana on December 26th and 27th, 2008 and represented a shift towards focusing more on telling Miami Stories for an international audience.
The CCCV Project was created, where 16 filmmakers were commissioned to create 16 short films, each about a different Miami neighborhood. While there were still some stinkers, the majority of the films were watchable as many of the young filmmakers had developed and some had even begun successful careers. The commissioned shorts screened alongside submissions from the now-robust local community.
Miami Native Barry Jenkins’ “Medicine for Melancholy” had its Miami premiere at this festival, and was the first feature ever screened at Borscht. “Medicine for Melancholy” went on to be released theatrically by IFC, was nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards, and named one of the top ten films of the year by the New York Times.
In the summer of 2009 most of the original filmmakers graduated college and moved back to Miami. They found Miami to be a very different city from when they left it, and found the community of young artists creating work in the city had expanded to the point where hundreds of submissions were received. Five films were commissioned as part of the “CCCV Stories” series, a continuation of 2008′s “CCCV Project.”
The Borscht Film Festival took place at the Gusman Center in downtown Miami on November 28th, 2009, and over 1,800 showed up to pack the 1,600 seat house. Several hundred people were left without tickets, to the point where the free tickets were being scalped outside the door. By now the films were pretty good, and went on to screen at festivals such as Cannes, Tribeca, Sundance, and Clermont-Ferrand, as well as Guggenheim Museums all over the world.
The festival was named the “Best Film Festival in Miami” by the Miami New Times, and called “Miami’s alt-culture summit” by the Miami Herald.
The Borscht Film Festival also became the only festival in the world to own a naval armada, in the form of two donated boats with which they challenge other festivals to battle on the high seas of Biscayne Bay. So far none have accepted this challenge.
In 2010, the Borscht Film Festival was awarded a large Arts Challenge Grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. With a check finally coming in, Borscht was forced to open a bank account, and become somewhat legitimized.
The festival opened up shop in a 7,000 sq foot warehouse just outside of Wynwood, across the street from a castle. The space came with Sylvester the Katman, who has lived in the space’s parking lot for the last 18 years. The festival commissioned fifteen short films and a video game, all of them collaborations between local and guest filmmakers and local musicians, creating the most exciting collection of young Miami talent ever.
The event will take place on April 23rd at the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center, with smaller events such as a robot battle occurring between April 9th and 22nd.
