After a two-year COVID break, the Sleeping Giant film festival returns to Sun-Ray Cinema in Jacksonville’s Five Points neighborhood, with more than a dozen films, shorts, cartoons and live appearances.
The festival opens Thursday night with a showing of “Phantom of the Open,” a 2021 feature film about an English crane operator dubbed “the world’s worst golfer” after posting a score of 121 in a qualifying event for the British Open Championship.
Matt Soergel, who once reviewed movies for the Times-Union, got an early look at the film and had this to say.
“This good-natured British underdog movie is based on the true story of Maurice Flitcroft (seen in clips at the end), a shipyard crane operator who, without ever playing an actual round of golf, decides to enter the 1976 British Open, on the strength of an application that lists his handicap as false teeth, lumbago and a touch of arthritis.
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“Somehow he gets into a qualifying round, which goes about as well as well as you might think. But that doesn’t deter Flitcroft from later entering other Opens under a variety of comical cover names and fake mustaches.
“His misadventures are always entertaining, and ‘Phantom’ has a big ending that’s pleasantly corny. There’s also a fine supporting cast: His ever-supportive wife (Sally Hawkins), his embarrassed adopted son, his disco-dancing champion twin sons (also a true story) and assorted colorful friends.
“It’s the chameleon-like Rylance though, seen lately as an oddball billionaire in ‘Don’t Look Up,’ who gives the film some extra zing: His Maurice Flitcroft is dogged, mischievous and more than eccentric. Rylance also shows that there’s some pain there — though Flitcroft is largely deluded, he’s not unaware that others think he’s ridiculous. And so he sticks with you, even as some of ‘Phantom’s’ formulaic turns fade away.”
Tim Massett, who owns the theater and curated the festival, said the idea is to show films casual movie fans might never see. Sun-Ray is known to show “films that exist in the margins,” and Sleeping Giant is just a way to show a bunch of them at once, he said.
“It’s hard to get eyeballs on smaller titles,” he said. In a festival setting, though, that’s what people expect and they’re more willing to sit through a film they wouldn’t think twice about otherwise.
The festival has short films, documentaries, experimental films and a couple of “Revival” films, 2002’s “Reflections of Evil” and “The Wobblies” from 1979. Children’s librarian Joe Gaskin will lead a Saturday morning cartoon session suitable for young kids, and Nicholas de Villiers from the University of North Florida will present “Goodbye, Dragon Inn” by director Tsai Min-liang. De Villiers is the author of “Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy: Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-liang,” which is scheduled for release in the fall.
Sleeping Giant also has live performances. Performance artist Jibz Cameron will appear twice as her alter-ego, Dynasty Handbag. Lee Ranaldo, founding guitarist with Sonic Youth, will do a live solo set and sit down for a question-and-answer session.
Sleeping Giant Film Festival
Thursday through Sunday at Sun-Ray Cinema
$12 per film, $40 for a five-film punch card, $90 for all-access pass
7:15 p.m.: “Vortex”
9:30 p.m.: Dynasty Handbag 101
10 p.m.: “Reflections of Evil”
FRIDAY
2 p.m.: “Hold Your Fire”
2:15 p.m.: “Vortex”
8 p.m.: Dynasty Handbag Live
10 p.m.: “Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr.”
SATURDAY
10:15 a.m.: Saturday Morning Cartoons
Noon: “Memoria”
12:10 p.m.: “Three Minutes: A Lengthening”
2 p.m.: “The Wobblies”
2:45 p.m.: “The Annotated Field Guide of Ulysses S. Grant”
4:15 p.m.: Experimental Test Kitchen
7 p.m.: Lee Ranaldo Live
9:30 p.m.: “Flux Gourmet”
SUNDAY
Noon: Sleepy and Cruisy Queer Cinema, “Goodbye, Dragon Inn”
12:10 p.m.: “Happening”
2:15 p.m.: “Beba” with “Raymond Tallis on Tickling”
2:30 p.m.: “Rock Bottom Riser”
7:10 p.m.: “Petite Maman”
