Susan Keller Horn and David Yakir. PHOTO BY MARY SCHENKEL

Vero Beach Film Festival organizers and guests reveled in another magical fantasyland, mingling, dining and dancing at the annual White Party, this year held at the United Against Poverty UP Center. Guests donned their most fetching white outfits, with many choosing to match their costumes to the elaborate, snowy white tablescapes they had created.

Earlier in the day, volunteers transformed the UP Center into a beautiful dining hall, complete with soft, white fabric flowing across the walls and ceiling, tiny white lights twinkling from every corner of the room, and tables draped with crisp white linens.

Animated chatter and laughter filled the room as guests, who had brought along their own centerpiece decorations, place settings and decadent edibles, began to admire one another’s festive attire and table décor.

“Not only is it a fundraiser, which brings in some revenue used to put the festival on, but it’s also the one that gives us great community awareness,” said David Yakir, VBFF executive director.

“A lot of people still do not know about the Vero Beach Film Festival and that it’s one of the highest rated film festivals in the world. We are one of the top 100 festivals out of 12,000, and that’s actually from filmmakers reviewing our festival,” he added.

Yakir noted that the reviewers frequently remark on how well filmmakers are treated and about all that the festival does to make their stay here a great one.

“Almost everything we do is based around our filmmaker population. We deal with a lot of emerging filmmakers and sometimes they go on to really big things,” said Yakir.

In his welcoming remarks, Yakir said that we all grew up on the movies, and learned through them about culture, love and history. He added that over the past 100 years, movies have been one of the most influential art forms.

“This year we took on a new, important direction called Film Vero, which is dedicated to this community. We began education programs at high schools and colleges,” said Yakir.

To help create an awareness of various nonprofits, he said they work with them to seek out films that create an awareness of their services, and hold screenings as fundraisers for the organizations.

“We partnered with the Community Church to bring in a film called ‘Screenagers’ about teenagers’ addiction to the screen, for example. And we partnered with the Learning Alliance with ‘Sentenced,’ about children learning to read by third grade,” said Yakir.

“And we’ve partnered with the UP Center tonight for our party and we’ll be giving a portion of the proceeds to them. We intend to continue this for our community.”

Yakir said festival films are selected by a committee of 15 volunteers, all specializing in different categories, who watch and rate the films. This year the festival drew 450 entries and only about 65 or 70 will be selected for showing.

The Vero Beach Film Festival will take place April 10-13, with a lineup that includes documentaries and narrative features, comedy, documentary and dramatic shorts, and Vero Visions, which highlights films submitted by Vero filmmakers.

During the multi-day festival, there will also be red carpet screenings, wine dinners, parties and filmmaker events. Film locations include the Majestic Theatre, Vero Beach Theatre Guild, Heritage Center, Community Church of Vero Beach and the Women’s Club of Vero Beach.

For more information, visit VBFilmFest.org.

Photos by Mary Schenkel