The 14^th Beaufort International Film Festival Heats Up February

By Mark Shaffer, Editor At Large

Much has changed since we first started covering the Beaufort International Film Festival back in 2009. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU) had just laid the foundation for the next decade’s campaign of worldwide cinematic domination with Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. James Cameron’s Avatar was about to shatter box office records on its way to becoming the top grossing film of all time with box office numbers so huge they were thought to be untouchable. Heath Ledger posthumously becomes the first actor to win an Oscar for the role of a comic book villain as Joker in The Dark Knight. And Ridley Scott’s acid rain-soaked dystopian world of Blade Runnerstill lurked somewhere in the future.  

Lowcountry Wind Symphony and Beaufort High School Band Partner for ‘An American Portrait’

The Lowcountry Wind Symphony Winter Concerts will be given at two different venues in Beaufort Country, South and North of the Broad River. The first is Wednesday, 7 pm February 12 at The Lowcountry Community Church, 801 Buckwalter Parkway, Bluffton. The second is Thursday, February 13, 7 pm at Beaufort High School Performing Arts Auditorium, 84 Sea Island Parkway on Lady’s Island. Both concerts are FREE and open to the public.

The Lowcountry Community Concert Band’s spring season opens with two upcoming concerts of music with the theme of “Folk Frolic.”  

The first concert is at 7 pm Sunday, February 23 at St. John’s Lutheran Church, at 157 Lady’s Island Drive in Beaufort.  

The second concert is at 7 pm Monday, February 24, at Magnolia Hall, 260 Sun City Blvd., Bluffton, open to Sun City residents and their guests. 

 Admission is free to both concerts (free-will donations gratefully accepted). 

The program on both nights includes “The Running Set” and “Rhosymedre” by Vaughan Williams; “Second Suite for Military Band,” by Gustav Holst; “Pineapple Poll (Opening Number),” based on music by Sir Arthur Sullivan; “Irish Tune from County Derry” and “Themes from ‘Green Bushes’” by Percy Grainger; and “Galop” from “Moscow, Cheremushky,” by Dmitri Shostakovich. 

The band is made up of about 60 volunteer musicians and is sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at USC-Beaufort.  For more information, contact: Pete Johnson at (267) 884-6805; Rick Eckstein at (843) 707-7813; or Carolyn Christy at (843) 540-7605.