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Film festival has its own story
(by Barbara Christian - October 13, 2010)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Film festival has its own story
I hope you are reading this on Thursday, because, if you are, that means you have not missed one of the biggest events to hit Chagrin Falls in a very long time -- the first-ever Chagrin Documentary Film Festival.
It began on Tuesday at the unlikely-est of places, the Fraternal Order of Eagles at the end of South Main Street, and it will end Saturday a bit uptown on North Franklin Street, in the digs of the Kraftmaid Experience showroom of fine cabinetry.
In between, from and throughout each day, there will be screenings of films that hold the dreams of filmmakers from across the globe and who are putting their stories out there for all of us to see.
Among them is no bigger dreamer than festival founder Mary Ann Ponce, who has worked for months bringing an idea into full flower. This festival has come straight through her heart from a gut-tearing experience all parents fear. The death of a child.
Mary Ann and Ed Ponce's beloved son, David, died in his 20s from complications of leukemia. He was a filmmaker too, you see, working on a story about children living with AIDS in the South African town of Roodepoort.
His parents understood his drive to make a documentary film that, as he once put it, would "give voice" to the children. David found there was amazing joy in that stricken place -- a hospice and an orphanage in a town called Sparrow Village. His film is titled, "Lost Sparrow of Roodepoort," and it will be shown during the festival.
His mom and dad will tell you that the experience gave him more than he expected, "a new understanding of the power of the human spirit" and, eventually, the courage to fight his own battle, which began just two months after his Sparrow Village journey. David died just over four years ago.
Finishing his Sparrow Village film became imperative to Mary Ann. She is not a trained filmmaker, but she shepherded "Sparrows" through to completion. With a fellow student at the California film school where David learned his craft, she returned to South Africa to get the rest of the Sparrow story.
And Mary Ann was there a year ago, when David's finally completed film was presented at a film festival in Ireland, where she was surrounded by young filmmakers not unlike her own son.
It's where she had her epiphany that Chagrin Falls could host a festival too. So she pitched the idea to AMRISTA, organizer of the film festival in Ireland. The AMRISTA people did their own due diligence. According to Mary Ann, they were charmed by Chagrin Falls and kept asking if she was sure there had never been a film festival staged here before. It was a natural, they kept saying.
And now the festival has opened. The dream is now complete, a tribute to the work and determination of one petite woman with a big idea and great love for her son. Fittingly, the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival is sponsored by David's Fevered Dreams Film Productions and manned by nearly 100 volunteers. It has attracted support from companies, organizations and individuals throughout the area.
If you go to the festival this week -- and you should -- seek out Mary Ann and congratulate her. She won't be hard to find. She will be the one wearing the biggest grin you have ever seen. She deserves to.
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