Scene & Heard

+ Filmmakers shoot touching story in SRQ
Last week, while everyone was buzzing about the big-budget J. Lo movie filming at the Cà d’Zan mansion, I caught local filmmakers Dayle Hoffman and Jacqueline Serrano shooting something nearer and dearer to our hearts: a short film called “A Lot In Common” about local artist Jini Mount, owner of Celery Barn Gallery in Towles Court.

The film, written by Mount, is about the warm and fuzzy relationship between a grandmother and her 4-year-old grandson. The 84-year-old artist stars in the movie alongside her real-life grandson, Kian.
Serrano, who moved six years ago from Los Angeles to Sarasota, is making her directorial debut with the film.

An independent producer, Serrano has worked in development and post-production on a number of Hollywood projects, including the TV show “Nash Bridges” and the Jennifer Tilly art-house flick, “Return to Babylon.”

Hoffman, an actress-about-town, met the budding director on the 2009 set of “Amoureuse Fantasy or Reality,” a black-and-white short filmed in Sarasota. Serrano was the film’s producer, and Hoffman was an extra.

“Once you find people you like working with, you tend to stick with them,” Hoffman says. “For me, this cast and crew are like family. We’re only five days into shooting and we’re pretty close.”

According to Serrano, the film will be shot mostly in black and white (her signature style) with some splices of color. With the Celery Barn as its backdrop, how could you not include color?

+ s/ART/q’s Sabrina Small needs your love
Artist Sabrina Small underwent a double mastectomy and oophorectomy (the removal of her ovaries) Tuesday after testing positive for a genetic mutation that would make her predisposed to cancer.

The BRCA2 gene is essentially a cancer-suppressing gene. If you inherit the mutated gene, you’re at a significantly greater risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers.

In an email to friends last month, Small announced that she had made the difficult and drastic decision to have prophylactic surgery to reduce her risk for both cancers.

To help offset the cost of the surgery, she’s hoping to sell some of her artwork.

Small, whom I profiled for The Observer last year, is a founding member of the contemporary arts group, s/ART/q, and a superbly talented (and unusual) artist. I asked her if she minded my mentioning her surgery in this column, and in typically mellow Sabrina fashion, she responded, “Sure, why not?”

So, here’s a link to Small’s website: sabrinasmall.com/now. If you’re into her art, purchase a piece. It’s hard enough to be a starving artist in this economy, let alone one with mounting medical bills.

HOT TICKETS

Ariel String Quartet: For the third year in a row, the Perlman Music Program is bringing its young, gifted alumni to Sarasota to give concerts at area schools. This season, the PMP/Suncoast is touting the talents of the Ariel String Quartet. The ensemble includes violinists Gershon Gerchikov and Alexandra Kazovsky, violist Jan Grüning and cellist Amit Even-Toy. The quartet will perform its first free public concert at 2 p.m. Oct. 16, at Church of the Palms, 3224 Bee Ridge Road. They’ll return again in January and May. Visit perlmanmusicprogramsuncoast.org or call 955-4942.