Thomasville, Georgia will be taking on some of the trappings of places like Sundance and Cannes over the next week. That’s because the Rose City is the site of the Covey Film Festival October 6-18.
Before we get into the movie lineup and other event nuts and bolts, one of the organizers Didi Hoffman said it’s important to keep in mind that this is a benefit for an important area resource.
“Well the Thomasville Community Resource Center is a 20-year old organization in Thomasville that works with underserved children,” she said. “And right now we have about 350 children in 10 different locations and we provide academic afterschool care for them as well as enrichment programs.”
With the demise of the Tallahassee Film Festival a few years ago, Hoffman says the Covey Film Festival’s star has risen considerably.
“Many people from Thomasville actually went to Tallahassee for the film festival and so we missed it on this end as well and we'd love to become a regional film festival so everybody in the Red Hills region can enjoy it and it becomes a destination.”
Actually, Hoffman said, this part of the country historically had a solid connection to the cinematic arts. That includes a well-known contemporary actress who in many ways still considers Thomasville an adopted hometown.
“Jane Fonda gave the seed money for the TCRC (Thomasville Community Resource Center) when she used to live in the area,” Hoffman remembered. “Then we found out the history of film goes way back in the Thomasville area and John “Jock” Whitney who lived on Greenwood Plantation in Thomasville actually was the person who funded ‘Gone with the Wind’ and it was actually screened in Thomasville before it opened in Atlanta.”
And during this year’s festival, Hoffman said there will be a real-life connection to one of the films being screened.
“The movie ‘The Good Life’ is going to be shown starring Reese Witherspoon. Jacob Atem who is one of Sudan’s ‘lost boys’ from many years ago is going to come and talk about what it was like to be an orphan in Sudan and walking thousands and thousands of miles with over 20,000 children through deserts and just trying to survive and then one day being picked up by an airplane and taken to Michigan.”
Hoffman said a number of films have great significance to people in the North Florida and South Georgia region.
“One is the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy is hosting ‘Who Owns Water’, which is an award-winning documentary and it was filmed about the water wars between the Chattahoochee, Flint and Apalachicola rivers and the Gulf of Mexico,” she said.
The festival is underway October 6 through 18.
“The majority of films will be at Thomas University,” Hoffman pointed out. “But we do have a couple of other venues and the website will tell you exactly where to go and we’re also on Facebook for the most current updates, but definitely the website, which is: www.coveyfilmfestival.com.”
And just remember, if you hear some self-described film buff insist the first-ever screening of ‘Gone with the Wind’ was in Atlanta, you can tell them they’re wrong. It was in Thomasville.