Whether packing the Sarasota Opera House for the premiere of Paradise, FL or offering students in the region a public audience for the first time, the Sarasota Film Festival this year has chosen to showcase cinema from the Sunshine State in a serious way. That was on display Monday morning at a special Florida Showcase of shorts, a line-up that included a potential reboot of the Expedition Florida series from PBS and a chance for Dunedin actor Ray Bouchard, who frequently attends to festival, to finally get his shot on an SFF screen.

“It’s so great not only to have filmmakers present, but to have an audience who loves watching film,” said Amber Steele, a University of Central Florida film student whose short film Freeform played Monday at the Sarasota festival. She and editor James Noir have traveled and brought student films to festivals around Florida, but said often the movies get shown for an audience of fellow filmmakers, a useful test audience but one most interested in hawking their own work.

The chance to put locally-produced film before a general audience was likely most on display on Saturday at the premiere of Paradise, FL, a film written by Sarasota producer Tony Stopperan and directed by Ringling College of Art and Design grad Nick Morgulis. Stopperan has already talked to some distributors, who gave notes for a final edit, and he said getting to show off the product at a Sarasota Opera House screening was an exciting opportunity offered by the festival. “A big weight is off my shoulders,” he said.

Check out our wall-to-wall coverage of the Sarasota Film Festival at SRQBacklot.com