The 16th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival August 22-24
7-24-2014: We will continue to add details to this schedule as the Festival approaches. Please bookmark the page so that you can find the schedule easily.
Sidewalk Film Festival is produced by the Alabama Moving Image Association, a federally recognized 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission to inspire, encourage and support filmgoers, the city of Birmingham and the filmmaking community. In addition to hosting the annual film festival, we host monthly networking and educational events, a monthly documentary series, short film and screenwriting competitions, manage a youth board and a variety of other year-round programs.
Tickets sales to our events cover approximately 1/3 of our annual operating cash budget, so we depend on corporate sponsors, grant-making organizations and individuals like you to survive. if you’d like to know more about supporting Sidewalk, please contact us at sidewalk@sidewalkfest.com.
Little White Lie tells Lacey Schwartz's story of growing up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity — despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin. She believes her family's explanation that her looks were inherited from her dark-skinned Sicilian grandfather. But when her parents abruptly split, her gut starts to tell her something different.
At age of 18, she finally confronts her mother and learns the truth: her biological father was not the man who raised her, but a black man named Rodney with whom her mother had had an affair. Afraid of losing her relationship with her parents, Lacey doesn't openly acknowledge her newly discovered black identity with her white family. When her biological father dies shortly before Lacey's 30th birthday, the family secret can stay hidden no longer. Following the funeral, Lacey begins a quest to reconcile the hidden pieces of her life and heal her relationship with the only father she ever knew.
What defines our identity, our family of origin or the family that raises us? How do we come to terms with the sins and mistakes of our parents? Lacey discovers that answering those questions means understanding her parents' own stories as well as her own. She pieces together her family history and the story of her dual identity using home videos, archival footage, interviews, and episodes from her own life. Little White Lie is a personal documentary about the legacy of family secrets, denial, and redemption.
The short film, What's in a Name, will be screening with Little White Lie. Director: Daniel Robin / DOC / USA / 14min One man's struggle to reclaim his Jewish name and identity after his grandfather changed their family name to avoid anti-Jewish quotas and get engineering work designing the Los Angeles freeways.