Lift - Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers

Join us Sunday, October 20th at 2pm for the second film in the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. This free screening will feature the documentary "Lift", followed by a panel discussion with David Peterson (Director and Producer), Mary Recine (Producer), and Steven Melendez (Protagonist), moderated by the Peabody Film Festival Founder Brent Zaffino-Lambert. Special thanks to the Fox Theatre for their partnership in bringing this program to the Canton Theatre.

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of South Arts. This screening is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Filmed over ten years, LIFT shines a spotlight on the invisible story of homelessness in America through the eyes of a group of young homeless and home-insecure ballet dancers in New York City. After performing all over the world, ballet dancer Steven Melendez returns to the Bronx shelter where he grew up to give back to his community, offering a New York Theatre Ballet workshop to children. His traumatic reaction to the shelter from his childhood sends him on an unexpected journey with three kids to reckon with a past he had escaped from through ballet. As young dance students, Victor, Yolanssie and Sharia face the same chasm of home insecurity that long separated Steven from his audience and makes the arts inaccessible to so many kids who share his background. The children he mentors offer him insight into turning a hidden trauma into dance, and together they make an aristocratic art form into an expression all their own.