Movie Lover’s Guide to South Beach

Miami Beach is a favorite locale for on-location shooting of films and TV series. While most of the stories are fictitious, the process of on-location shooting captures a record of a place as it was at a particular point in time. We witness all the elements that comprise a neighborhood; its buildings, its people, the noise, even the level of automobile traffic. We will reconstruct the history of Art Deco and the City of Miami Beach by presenting short movie clips and frame freezes from films to illustrate the ever-changing nature of Miami Beach, its buildings, and its people. “Movie magic” will be dissected with a demonstration of a hard-to-see internal joke and impossible location movements not readily visible to the casual observer.

About the Guide

Joel Levine is a Tour Guide and Board Member of the Miami Design Preservation League. Prior to retiring from a career in medical and educational administration, he collected and restored radios and televisions from the Art Deco and Mid Century Modern periods (1925-1970). Joel uses unconventional sources, including movie clips and picture postcards to tell a story about a place and its people. He has presented in Miami Beach, Tel Aviv, Mauritius, and Napier, New Zealand.