Directors: Dennis Scholl & Kareem Tabasch, USA, 2018, 70 min., English.
Long before Art Deco was a movement, South Beach was home to the largest cluster of Jewish retirees in the country. Intrigued by the low-cost of living and thriving cultural life, they came in the thousands. By the 1970s, these former New Yorkers made Miami Beach home to a population that was primarily over 70 and overwhelmingly Jewish. We take a journey to the iconic Miami Beach of yesterday through the lens of young photographers Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe as they embarked upon an ambitious 10-year project. They documented the aging population living in the sunburned paradise of 1970s Miami Beach as well as the changing, turbulent 1980s. Working in different styles and approaches, they captured the end of an era through Monroe’s engrossing black and white images juxtaposed with Sweet’s captivating candy-hued color photos. The result is one of the most fascinating photographic documentations of a community ever caught on film.
Special Guests: Kareem Tabasch, Dennis Scholl