Oct. 4, 2026, 5:03 a.m. ET
Four days. Five screens. 80 films. And one big concert.
This week, the Tallahassee Film Festival breaks into new frontiers of word, sound and image, expanding its reach every which way.
Top-billed is a rare Florida appearance by legendary culture-jammers Negativland + Sue-C, with an Oct. 10 performance at presenting sponsor the Challenger Learning Center. The “Significantly Less Deceptive” tour features projections by “real-time cinema” artist Sue-C on the massive IMAX screen.
The Bay Area legends, formed in 1980, mix original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them. Negativland surreally re-arrange these found bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to.The concert is co-presented with Super Cool Awesome Music Services, who also present “Afterland,” a late-night party in the venue’s Fogg Planetarium.
Festival: FSU grad films love letter to north Florida with mysterious ‘Frogtown’Love crosswords? Explore the Crossword page and play the new MidGrid Crossword.
The multimedia collective’s mindbending creative vision is just one facet of the festival, which expands to four days (Oct. 8-11). The programs elevate Florida filmmakers, explore social, political and ecological themes of urgent interest, and reflect the immediate world around us.
This year, its exciting focus on life in the Sunshine State is ever more kaleidoscopic. Friday’s opening night belongs to debut filmmaker Costa Karalis, a graduate of FSU’s film program, who brings a genre-defying sensibility to the Panhandle town of Marianna, exploring the magic realism of childhood imagination in “Frogtown.”
Karalis, along with cast members and producer Evan Barber (“It Ends”) will join us to introduce the film and participate in a post-screening Q&A. As a bonus, the short “Big Top: A Flying High Circus Story” will open the show with a documentary about the FSU troupe’s heroic comeback after a tornado destroyed its iconic tent.
The show is immediately followed by the Opening Night Party – free to passholders – from 9:45 p.m. to midnight at The Assembly on Adams, with a DJ set by Burlap Productions.
Film Fest: New College of Florida documentary will screen in Tallahassee
Other remarkable films with their eye on Florida include “First They Came for My College,” Patrick Bresnan’s documentary about the state’s conservative takeover of Sarasota’s innovative New College; “The Moths & The Flame,” Kevin Contento’s poetic look at Black fatherhood, shadowed by the sugarcane fields of Pahokee; and “Andre,” the debut from Miami-based writer-director Spencer Levy, which offers a uniquely surreal vision of the Capital City and its eccentric personalities.
Dylan Melcher’s comedy “Jellyfish Season” turns a weekend escape to the beach into a strange odyssey for three buddies looking to reboot their lives. Sundance favorite “Take Me Home” draws on writer-director Liz Sargeant’s own life in an emotionally powerful family drama set amid a dangerous Florida heat wave.
Among multiple shorts blocks devoted to everything from comedy to nonfiction, the Tallahassee Filmmakers group premieres the Tally850 Short Film Competition. Competing teams were tasked to make a short film in 90 days, and the top ranking films will premiere on the big screen in the “850” shorts program on Saturday, Oct. 10.
Friday on our minds
The group also will participate in special Friday daytime events focused on the city’s filmmaking community. Look for panels and screenings of locally produced documentaries from Bobby Buccellato and Adam Baumel (“Carter Country,” which explores Jimmy Carter’s rural Georgia roots) and musical legend and naturalist Sammy Tedder (“River Obscura: Secrets of a Blackwater River – Episode Two,”) with further explorations of the Sopchoppy River.
The day’s programs also include a visit from Alabama writer-director and educator Michael Curtis Johnson, who will screen his “The Undiscovered Country,” a no-budget drama made with his students at the University of North Alabama, and a unique screening of so-called “dome films,” projected in 360 degrees in the Planetarium.
Mean Streets and Rolling Thunder
Heroes of rock’n’roll and cinema whose careers are potently intertwined are examined in a pair of literary events.
On Thursday, Oct. 8, New York Times Magazine contributing writer Mark Binelli visits the Challenger to talk about “Just a Shot Away: Martin Scorsese’s Life in Film” (Metropolitan), the first major biography of America’s greatest modern filmmaker, accompanied by rare public screenings of two essential Scorsese short films, “An American Boy” and “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” Midtown Reader will sell copies for signing.
On Saturday, Oct, 10, Chicago filmmaker Michael Smith will discuss “Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think” (McNidder & Grace), an analysis of the protean songwriter’s cinematic vision, accompanied by Ben Creech’s short film adaptation. (Smith also will screen his latest comedy, ‘Hekla”).
Cap City: Indies gone wild
Longtime festival partners Cap City Video Lounge will host a bespoke program on Saturday, Oct. 10, in their new, expanded screening space on West Pensacola Street. It’s fully loaded with fresh and unpredictable new work from rising indie filmmakers.
The roster includes the Montreal sendup “Messy Legends,” a fractious comedy about delusional millennial scenesters from the duo known as Voyeurism (Kelly Kay Hurcomb and James Watts), and Jennifer Kroot’s “Hunky Jesus,” a documentary about San Francisco drag legends. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” will also flaunt a special guest appearance by Tampa Bay members of the troupe.
New York City is the main character in Jess Zeidman’s “Human Theories,” which tracks an array of encounters across some 40 vignettes throughout a day in the life of a metropolis. Taylor Olson’s “Stitches,” a psychological freakout in three episodes, takes the late-night slot, preceded by a block of horror-themed shorts.
Strange Days
Ecological themes find compelling expression in a pair of visionary documentaries focused on earth and sky.
“Daughters of the Forest” is a story of entanglements: between humans and mushrooms; the visible and the invisible; generational knowledge and modern science.
“Shifting Baselines” offers a strikingly monochrome meditation on outer space and our complicated contemporary relationship to the stars, as Elon Musk fantasizes about colonizing Mars. It’s not the only film about the strange times we live in.
“The Great Experiment,” from Steven Maing and Eric Daniel Metzgar, chronicles in spellbinding black-and-white American life between the years 2017 and 2021, holding up a mirror to a country at war with its own reflection.
Rob Rice’s “Ponderosa” offers its own dark and subversively wry study of surreal contemporary Americana.
“Lost Cause,” from Adam Kritzer, is a meta-narrative about a Yom Kippur service that turns into a group therapy session that turns into a musical.
The found-footage documentary “Nova ‘78” spotlights cultural giants from the Beat and Punk eras – William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith, Timothy Leary, Laurie Anderson – as they perform at the 1978 Nova Convention in New York, offering uncanny projections of the future: our present. The film closes the festival Sunday night.
Family fun
There’s also free outdoor entertainment Oct. 10 with a 30th anniversary screening of Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!” on the green by Kleman Plaza. The cult favorite, a deliriously nutball spoof of 1950s alien invasion movies, stars Jack Nicholson, Jack Black, Annette Bening and Danny Devito. Those surf-rocking apes from space The Disasternauts play at 7 p.m., with screening to follow at 8. Blankets and lawn chairs encouraged.
If you go
All Access ($60) passes are on sale at tallahasseefilmfestival.com. Tickets to individual programs can be purchased at the door (and in advance online for some select programs). Festival venues are Challenger Learning Center, 200 S. Duval St. and Cap City Video Lounge, 2122 W. Pensacola St.