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Some Kind of Heaven, 2021(Film still)
Director Lance Oppenheim shares the story of his directorial debut, Some Kind of Heaven, which explores the strange reality of The Villages – Florida’s famed retirement community
May 11, 2021
“I grew up in South Florida and The Villages are in central Florida. Any time there was a slow news day my local newspaper would print the most outrageous headlines from The Villages,” says
Lance Oppenheim on his initial encounter with the famed retirement community and the subject of his directorial debut,
Some Kind of Heaven. “When I was in middle school there was a myth about the high rate of STDs and the papers got a real kick out of it, lampooning and judging the residents for their more hedonistic ways of living.”
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The Villages is a planned retirement community that bills itself as Florida’s friendliest hometown.
The community began in the mid-1980s with a few thousand residents aged 55 and over and is now a boom-town of almost 140,000 retirees.
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Bigger than Manhattan, The Villages is not far from Florida’s Disney World and is often compared to the theme park; fantasy, fakery and facade are common elements.
Everything in The Villages is carefully designed to replicate a glorious time and place in America that never really existed.