Activists' film makes festival

Posted on Thursday, October 06, 2005

Documentary

PETER ANDREW BOSCH/HERALD STAFF

STAY OUT: Richard Fendelman, left, and Marc Sarnoff fought to keep Home Depot out of Coconut Grove

Activists' film makes festival

Activists battling a planned Home Depot in Coconut Grove are ready to show their film about the issue -- a chronicle of the events and people involved.

BY LAURA MORALES
llmorales@herald.com

The Groveites' push to keep Home Depot out of their village did not impress most city officials. But their story did impress the director of the Sundance Film Festival -- enough to grant them an extra week to submit their documentary on their lost struggle.

Don't Box Me In: A Coconut Grove Story makes its world premiere Friday at the Coconut Grove Women's Club.

It tells the story of the group Grove First, who fought to keep the store out of the Grove, the store's soon-to-come arrival and the acrimony between City Commissioner Johnny Winton and the folks who feel he let them down.

Grove First leader Marc Sarnoff said the group decided to make the 40-minute film after city commissioners nixed two condo towers in Morningside earlier this year even though the code permitted them.

Sarnoff and his group had hoped to get the same help with Home Depot -- but didn't. The commission approved the Depot project and the company is in the process of finalizing the special permit it needs to start demolition of the old Kmart on the property at the corner of Bird Road and U.S. 1.

''We wanted to show how the city chose not to help us the way they helped Morningside,'' Sarnoff said.

The video opens by flashing the names of key players who declined interview requests, including Seth Gordon, who owns the retailer's local public relations firm; Max Strang, the Grove architect tapped to design a ''Grove-friendly'' store; and Winton, the commissioner who represents the Grove's interests.

''The Home Depot battle is done,'' Winton explained this week to The Herald, adding that it's time to move on.

One city of Miami official did consent to be interviewed on camera: Commissioner Tomás Regalado, whose district includes a Home Depot store that generates daily complaints from residential neighbors and who rallied against the Grove store.

Richard Fendelman, who ran the Grove Art Cinema with his brother James until its closing in 1989, directed the documentary.

Over a three-month period, he spent hundreds of hours researching, shooting and editing.

''I hadn't been involved in the Home Depot issue at all when the Grove First approached me to do the movie,'' said Fendelman, a University of Miami graduate who has been a producer for CBS-KMOX in St. Louis and founded his own company Expect A Miracle Productions in 1995. He added that he made it a point to be as concise and fair as possible in his final cut.

The movie establishes the Grove's leafy, loopy and historic charm with images of the area's first settlers, boats on today's Biscayne Bay and the sun-dappled tree tunnels the community is famous for.

It then contrasts with video of trash, traffic and pallets of fertilizer and cinderblocks surrounding several Home Depots in Miami-Dade.

The film highlights footage from the packed-house City Hall meetings where officials -- such as Winton -- declared themselves defenseless against the store.

Among the cameo appearances: Home Depot representative Kevin Workman, who uses the ''e'' word 10 times.

''This is a very exciting concept, I'm very excited,'' Workman says.

The rest of the film traces the battle through interviews with residents and national anti-sprawl crusader Al Norman.

Susan Billig, a longtime Groveite who recently died of heart disease, is memorialized in the film.

Grove First soldiers will be handing out free DVDs of the film at Friday's premiere.

Even though the film's creators missed the deadline to enter Sundance, the festival's director offered them an extra week to get in an application after seeing the documentary, Sarnoff said.

Judges -- and the rest of the world -- can see the movie at the January event.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/12828915.htm