Past Press 06

Something new under the sun

By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
Published May 5, 2006

Nobody needs sunscreen inside a movie theater, but talented, obscure filmmakers need this weekend's inaugural SunScreen Film Festival to bring their art to the light of day.

SunScreen is chiefly organized by Tony Armer, co-founder of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Film Society dedicated to promoting independent filmmakers in Florida. Armer has been part of that overlooked cinema fraternity for five years - long enough to realize artists with dreams and skimpy financing need outlets to display what they can do.

"When it comes to independent films, some people put a year or two into making a movie, spending all your own money and running up your credit cards," Armer said. "You have nothing to show for it in the end except what people think of it."

To that end, filmmakers from across the nation are bringing their reels to Studio@620 located at 620 First Ave. S in St. Petersburg, to share their visions, paying their own way to a very long shot at fame. Nobody expects to nab a distribution deal at a fledgling film festival. Leaving St. Petersburg as relatively unknown as when they arrived is likelier.

However, the creators of 34 feature, documentary and short films selected for the SunScreen lineup are compelled to take that chance. Visit the festival Web site (www.sunscreenfilmfestival.com) for a complete list of entrants and show times.

"If you're a filmmaker it's something you enjoy doing, first and foremost," Armer said. "At some point you'd love to not necessarily be rich and famous, but maybe just make a living just making films in the industry. You realize that's probably not going to be the case, but if you can continue to make better films and improve your craft and it's something you enjoy, then by all means (do it).

"You've got to have some kind of focus in your life beyond 9 to 5 every day. You need something to give you a sense of passion and that's what filmmakers are: very passionate about film and what they do. That's why they do what they do as opposed to any expectations of becoming rich and famous."

For some SunScreen entrants, the festival is also a chance to show friends and family how they've been spending all that time and money.

Among the artists with local ties are Tampa's Paul and Pete Guzzo, whose production 99 is drawing attention on the small festival circuit. Last month, 99 played to the largest crowd ever at Ybor City's Festival of the Moving Image, after winning the top prize at the Garden State Film Festival in New Jersey. Two weeks later, 99 was named best comedy and earned a best actor prize for Matt Camero at the Bare Bones Film Festival in Oklahoma.

Not exactly Cannes or Sundance, but enough to give the Guzzo brothers the kind of encouragement independent filmmakers need.

"Just getting accepted into a festival gives you a sense of accomplishment, a pat on the back that somebody admires your work and people will get a chance to see it," Paul Guzzo said. "Whether you get picked as a best-of at a particular festival doesn't matter so much as seeing the reactions of people to your work."

Showing at 6 p.m. Saturday, 99 is the story of two college students approaching graduation with unusual deadlines. Paris (Camero) is closing in on his wager of bedding 100 women before getting his diploma. A friend with an unprintable nickname (Jereme Badger) needs to pass a drug test to claim a tropical beach bar inheritance. Despite the provocative subjects, 99 contains no nudity or profanity, which is proudly noted on its Web site (www.99themovie.com).

The Guzzos might not understand what they have on their hands, if not for festival exposure.

"We've seen the film a thousand times, and see things we could've done better," Paul Guzzo said. "We've seen it so many times that we're bored with it; we don't laugh or anything. You don't really get to know what other people think of it. Then you take it to a festival and it wins best comedy. It's crazy."

Even crazier is facing an encore presentation with a home screen advantage, a mixed blessing, according to Paul Guzzo.

"It's more nerve-racking showing it around here," he said. "When we go to other cities, people come to the film with absolutely no expectations. But at least we don't have to pay for plane flights or hotels, which really starts emptying your pockets.

"Going to all these festivals all around the country, we've seen a lot of the films making the rounds, some really amazing films. Some will be at SunScreen. I'm impressed at how many of these films they got for a first-year festival."

Paul Guzzo pointed to the Wedding Crashers-style comedy Bachelor Man (8:30 p.m. Saturday) and the thriller 29 Minutes to Run (3:30 p.m. Sunday), whose producer-star Gary Weeks surprised him at the Palm Beach festival when he mentioned SunScreen was on his barnstorming schedule.

"He had been traveling all around the country with his brother showing the film, and his wife wanted to go on vacation," Guzzo said. "So they figured they would enter in St. Pete for a weekend. Palm Beach was absolutely mobbed with filmmakers who just wanted to take a vacation in Florida.

"We always wondered why Tampa hasn't tapped into this. The guys at SunScreen seem to have done a fantastic job of marketing the festival and getting quality films in a beautiful vacation spot. We really hope that this is the beginning of a great era in the Tampa Bay area because we need it."

Another SunScreen entrant with local ties is Kimberly M. Wetherell, who attended Clearwater High School and Gibbs High School's Artistically Talented Program (now known as the Pinellas County Center for the Arts). Wetherell specialized in staging opera productions at DePaul University before working as a director for opera companies in Houston and New York.

An internship with New York Women in Film and Television changed her tune to filmmaking, although Wetherell's first project was updating Gian Carlo Menotti's one-act 1947 opera The Telephone. She turned it into Menage a Trois, a romantic triangle between a man, a woman and her cellular telephone. Menage a Trois will be shown Saturday during a short film collection beginning at 10 a.m.

"It's my little way to give back to the community and say, 'I went to high school there and now look. You can go on and have a career in the arts. This isn't just something that's fun to do in high school.'

"It's also a way for my grandmother to come see the film. She's in an assisted-living facility so she's unable to travel, like to New York, for the premiere. That kind of thing is important to me. There's nothing to lose and everything to gain by showing (the film) at home."

Audience reception for Menage a Trois on the festival circuit has encouraged Wetherell to create her first feature-length project, A Pretty Girl (A Sheyne Maydl). She plans to shoot nearly one-third of the story in Clearwater in 2007.

"It's about a young woman who discovers her grandmother isn't Irish-Catholic, but a Polish Holocaust survivor who has lived her entire life in secret," Wetherell said. "At the same time, the young woman is a young, well-to-do Manhattan socialite who always ignored her blue-collar upbringing in Clearwater. The film is really all about reconciling - these women reconciling their past with the present."

But that's the future. For now, Wetherell still is shopping Menage a Trois around festivals, making connections that could boost her next film's chances for a distribution deal. She'll tell anyone anything they wish to know about her project - except what it cost to produce.

"I'll give you my standard answer," she said: "Cheaper than film school and I got a lot more out of it."

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com.

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