37th cleveland international film festival :: April 3 - april 14, 2013
Film Festival Blog
April 4th, 2011 @ 1:30am

Standing Up Meets Stand-Up

What a magical night.

Okay, it didn't go off without a few hitches... but you were all so wonderful about those hitches! You may not have been able to see Soul Surfer, but we did get everybody a seat in a great film and virtually all of you were so gracious and understanding. This is why I've been calling you the best Festival crowd in the world! (P.S. - Sean McNamara, we all love you.)

Sadly, the amazing crew at Virginia Marti was unable to join us and record the Closing Night Ceremonies. But I saw a cameraman from Channel 3 recording everything, and I've been told that there will be a radio broadcast of the ceremony in the morning on WKSU, too. So there are still ways to be part of the story from afar!

For me, though, the high point of the night was watching Biagio Messina and Steve Mazan accept the Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Award for Dying to do Letterman. I can't even begin to describe the tremendous joy that welled up within me when Bill announced that they'd won. And in the face of their joy, all of the hitches and glitches of the night melted away and seemed so trivial. Their story of triumph against adversity became even more triumphant, and I am so glad I was there to witness it.

There will be a full list of award winners on the site very soon, if it isn't up already, and I hope that at least one of the victors will be someone as close to your heart as the Dying to do Letterman crew is to mine. There will also be exact numbers of just how thoroughly you broke our attendance records, and how amazingly you blasted through our Challenge Match goals.

I'm still riding such a high from the Festival! I can barely calm down enough to go to sleep -- which I really should do because I have to get up again in six hours! I can't believe it's come to an end... but at least I know the story will have a new chapter a year from now. And I know that every chapter, every year, is better than the last.

Good night, everyone, and thank you so much for being part of all the stories of the Festival. I wish I could have recorded every one of them in the blog, because I barely scratched the surface. See you next year! I know you're going to amaze us all over again then.

Posted by Lara Klaber

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