For its twelfth year, the Sunscreen Film Festival boasts an impressive lineup of 125 feature and short films, celebrity guests such as Dylan McDermott and Joe Pantoliano, a film market, and workshops to help actors, screenwriters, producers and other aspiring filmmakers tell their stories.
Not bad for an event that started as a small slate of films in an art gallery with an audience of about 600 people. “It’s really put the St. Pete, Clearwater, Tampa area on the film world map,” said Tony Armer, its founder and now the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Film Commissioner. (For more festival background, check out our interview with festival Executive Director Ryan Tarrant.)
The festival runs Thursday, April 27, through Sunday, April 30 over several St. Pete venues and now draws about 10,000 visitors. The full schedule is online at sunscreenfilmfestival.com, with tickets available by film, by day, or for the whole weekend.
Where to go: Opening day kicks off at The Palladium (253 5th Ave. N.), including the red carpet festivities at 7 p.m. before the screening of Blind (more below). But the majority of screenings are split between AMC Sundial (151 2nd Ave. N.) and American Stage Theatre Company (163 3rd St. N.). All workshops will be held at American Stage.
Freebies: Daphne Zuniga — Princess Vespa in Mel Brooks’s loopy Spaceballs — commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars spoof (which co-stars Bill Pullman, Joan Rivers, John Candy, and Rick Moranis) with a free outdoor showing Friday, April 28, at 8 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts (225 Beach Dr. NE). The festival honors the closing of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus after 146 years with a free showing 11:10 a.m. Sunday, April 30, of Cecil B. DeMille’s Oscar-winning The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) at Sundial.
Inside dish: Movie tough guy and surprisingly silky crooner Robert Davi (The Goonies, Die Hard, License to Kill) chats onstage with Tampa Bay Times film critic Steve Persall on Saturday, April 29, at Sundial after the 4:05 screening of Davi’s Way, a documentary about his attempt to recreate Frank Sinatra’s “Main Event” concert in Madison Square Garden for Sinatra’s 100th birthday. On Sunday at 4 p.m. at The Studio@620 (620 1st Ave. S.), Persall talks onstage with Pantoliano, a memorable scene-stealer in Risky Business, Midnight Run, The Fugitive, The Matrix and Memento, among many others.
Learn the ropes: The workshops at American Stage will offer tips on everything from how to finance, distribute and market your film to finding your unique acting voice. Zuniga joins Selenis Leyva (Orange is the New Black, interview here), Eugenie Bondurant (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Mary Rachel Dudley (Turtle Tale) and other women working in film for “Discovering the Female Voice,” Saturday at 2:15; UCLA screenwriting instructor Tim Albaugh shares his techniques at 11:15 on Friday; and at the panel with the best title of ’em all — “Kicking Ass and Taking Names” (Friday, 2:15) — kickboxing champ Don “The Dragon” Wilson (Batman Forever), Pantoliano, Davi, Bill Duke (Predator) and Leyva will talk about working in action/adventure films and TV shows.
Big names, big issues: McDermott (Olympus Has Fallen, American Horror Story) and director Michael Mailer (son of Norman) will be on hand for Blind, co-starring Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore, about a sightless novelist who rediscovers his passion for writing and life. McDermott also is promoting Sugar, a web series he produced with Ringling College of Art & Design film students about a teenage runaway lured into human trafficking (Thursday, 4:30, Palladium). The documentary After Spring (executive produced by Jon Stewart) follows Syrian refugee families and workers in a refugee camp (Sunday, 3:30, American Stage), while Who Is Dayani Cristal? featuring Gael Garcia Bernal includes a post-film discussion with a human-rights expert (Friday, 6:30, American Stage). On Saturday at 11:30 at American Stage, producer Steve Michelson focuses on environmental issues in The Burden (America’s dependence on fossil fuels) and Nature’s Orchestra (listening to the sounds of nature for changes in the ecosystem). Zuniga stars in the drama Those Left Behind (Sat., 4:10, Sundial) about a family trying to come to terms with a suicide. And the closing night film Albion: The Enchanted Stallion, co-produced by Restaino and starring Jennifer Morrison (Once Upon a Time), Debra Messing (Will & Grace) and John Cleese, invites you to enter an enchanted world with a 12-year-old girl and a magical horse (Sunday, 5:30, Sundial).
Florida films: On Sunday at 2 p.m. at The Studio@620, prior to his talk at 4 with Steve Persall, Pantoliano screens his 2006 Florida-made drama Canvas about a woman (Marcia Gay Harden) with schizophrenia. Other locally focused films include Paying Mr. McGetty, an action-comedy about a wannabe music producer in St. Pete who wakes up in downtown Tampa with a mobster’s daughter (Saturday, 4:25, Sundial) and Eat. Speak. St. Pete., a documentary that brings people with opposing views together over food for an unscripted conversation about local history (Friday, 2:35, American Stage).
Other voices: Bill Duke directed Created Equal, a legal drama co-starring Lou Diamond Phillips about a woman who sues to become a Catholic priest (Saturday, 6:05, Sundial). Whose Streets?, a 2017 Sundance documentary, focuses on the community leaders who banded together in the aftermath of the Ferguson, Mo., police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown (Saturday, 2, Sundial). Sam Elliott plays a Western icon with a golden voice (not too far off the mark) in The Hero, in which his character tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Krysten Ritter of Jessica Jones) (Friday, 8:25, Sundial). And the retro art of 30-year-old game consoles unites artists developing a new game for the Nintendo Entertainment System in The New 8-Bit Heroes (Saturday, 12:10, Sundial).
Cinephiles, start your engines!
