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“SOME KIND OF HEAVEN”
WITH THE SAG HARBOR CINEMA AND HAMPTONS DOC FEST
As festival season ramps up and award-worthy films start to flood our screens, our virtual programming continues with a new collaboration between Hamptons Doc Fest and Sag Harbor Cinema who will co-present newcomer Lance Oppenheim’s raw documentary Some Kind of Heaven (2020).
“We are happy to be collaborating with the Sag Harbor Cinema once again,” says Jacqui Lofaro, Executive Director of Hamptons Doc Fest. “This film is perfect for our documentary fans who relish a good story well told.”
“Lance Oppenheim’s work explores the way fantasy informs real life, which makes The Villages an ideal subject for him. The film’s palette and strikingly styled compositions subvert facile assumptions about the documentary form. I am very happy we have chosen this daring film to co-present with Hamptons Doc Fest,” says Sag Harbor Cinema’s artistic director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.
The film captures life inside the palm-tree lined streets of The Villages, America’s largest retirement community, located in Florida. Referred to as “Disneyland for Retirees,” this planned community is home to over 130,000 seniors, and offers residents a utopian version of the American yesteryear: wide, safe streets; perfectly manicured lawns; countless activities from synchronized swimming to golf cart parades; and even a Fountain of Youth, all in service of seniors enjoying their golden years.
While most residents have bought into The Villages’ packaged, candy-colored positivity, we meet four residents living on the margins, striving to find happiness. Married couple Anne and Reggie, widow Barbara, and 82-year-old bachelor Dennis all struggle to find their place in this fantasy oasis as they seek to survive and thrive in their golden years.
Oppenheim hails from South Florida, about 225 miles southeast of The Villages. “On a slow news day, there would be salacious articles about the place with headlines like ‘Seniors Arrested for Public Sex,’ or New York Post articles infamously reporting unfounded rumors about the community’s growing S.T.D. rate,” the film’s director recalls.
Oppenheim graduated from Harvard University’s visual environmental studies program in 2019. His films explore the lives of people who create homes in unconventional places and circumstances. Oppenheim, a 2019 Sundance Ignite Fellow, was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. He is the youngest contributor to The New York Times Op-Docs TV Series and has screened his work at over 65 film festivals. Some Kind of Heaven is his first feature film. Darren Aronofsky is one of its executive producers.
The film will be available to stream through Hamptons Doc Fest from December 5th-13th, together with a taped conversation between Director Lance Oppenheim and Sag Harbor Cinema Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. For tickets go to https://www.hamptonsdocfest.com/2020-films/some-kind-of-heaven#elevent
