I have to admit that I was skeptical when I first heard about Swede Fest Tampa Bay, the Oct. 21 film festival highlighting the best in Bay area Swedes. For the uninitiated, a "Swede" is a movie shot by an amateur filmmaker who takes a successful or beloved film (like Dumbo, seen above) and remakes it with little money, equipment or production value. Sweding had it's moment in the sun in 2008 when director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) made the Jack Black-Mos Def flick Be Kind, Rewind, spawning an entire subculture of Sweders in the process.
Still, a bunch of amateurs making movies in their garage? As I said to festival organizer Will Allbritton over lunch in August, "I don't want to see some kid re-shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark in his backyard."
But after talking to Albritton, I do want to see that movie, and a whole bunch more …
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2011.