Home Base

This area is brimming with people moving here to escape the burdens of major Northern cities, wanting to get a big piece of this Southern hospitality.

New York natives plan national film festival from the comforts of Lake Norman

This area is brimming with people moving here to escape the burdens of major Northern cities, wanting to get a big piece of this Southern hospitality.

In February 2006, Floyd and Stephanie Rance, encouraged by Stephanie's parents, packed up their belongings in New York and moved to the SailView community on Lake Norman. But they remain committed to producing the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, which they launched five years ago.

"It's grown and changed just by word of mouth," says Floyd, forty, a director who's worked on national television commercials through his Run and Shoot Filmworks company. "People from all over the country have found out about it."

The idea to start the festival came while Stephanie, thirty-nine and an event planner, was coordinating an event at Martha's Vineyard. She says part of the event's activities included movies being shown at a theater there, which had a line of people around the block waiting to get in. "We thought, ‘Oh, my God. We might have something here.' "

The festival takes place August 8-11, and will showcase fifty-five films by independent African-American filmmakers, all of which were screened by the Rances and their committee. "It takes a year to plan," Stephanie says. "We start accepting submissions for the next year the day after the festival closes."

The four-day event will also feature an art expo, actors workshop, a panel discussion with filmmakers, and several parties. Last year's festival drew 1,100 attendees, the Rances say. They also premiered Idlewild, which they say was made possible through HBO, one of the festival's sponsors.

Learn more about the film festival by visiting www.mvaaff.com . —Jarvis Holliday