Sophomore year can be a tricky thing, but not for Tampa's Gasparilla Film Festival. GFF promoters kicked off their event last year and did a bang-up job letting the world know it existed. But in its second year of operation, it's clear that what really counts — the festival's content — has finally begun to catch up with the hype.
Nearly two dozen feature films will be screened between Feb. 27 and March 2 — and having previewed over half of them, I'm happy to report there's not a clunker in the batch. The festival's emphasis remains centered on grassroots filmmaking and American indies, but there are some solid international offerings as well (thanks to GFF's recently forged partnership with the esteemed Global Lens series), as well as a number of interesting Latin films and a few cult items that don't easily fit into any specific category. (GFF lumps them into a sidebar dubbed "fun and fear."). The mix of movies is eclectic but carefully chosen and — to cut to the chase — the overall quality is a significant step up from last year.
Here's an idea of what to expect over the festival's five-day run:
Things kick off on Wed., Feb. 27 with an opening night reception at Tampa Theatre, followed by an 8 p.m. screening of Kabluey, a gently loopy comedy about a barely functional man-child playing Mr. Mom to his sister-in-law (Lisa Kudrow)'s kids. Upbeat and accessible but just quirky enough to qualify for nonmainstream credibility, Kabluey is a smart choice to open this year's fest and even boasts a local connection in producer Jeff Balis, a Tampa boy made good in the wilds of Hollywood. Balis and director/star Scott Pendergrast will be on hand for the Tampa Theatre screening and the after-party at Spain restaurant.
The bulk of this year's screenings take place at downtown Tampa's Channelside Cinemas, where the festival moves on Thurs., Feb. 28 with an evening of documentary features. Up first, at 5 p.m. is Autism — The Musical (repeats Sunday at 3:50 p.m.), which, though not remotely as outrageous as its title suggests (I was hoping for Mel Brooks by way of Christopher Guest), is an engaging and only occasionally sentimental account of an L.A. woman guiding a group of autistic kids in writing and performing their very own musical.
Up next is Dream Havana (7:10 p.m., repeats Fri. at 5:45 p.m.), a poignant and quietly effective documentary about Ernesto Santana, a thoroughly unique Cuban who decided to stay in his native country even as all his closest friends were fleeing for Miami. A talented poet and novelist in his own right, Santana was Havana's answer to Gertrude Stein: a teacher and "bridge" connecting a circle of budding artists and intellectuals. Dream Havana serves as both a thoughtful study of this passionate individual and as a highly personal history of the beauty and horrors of late-20th-century Cuba, a place the film lovingly refers to as the "infernal paradise."
Thursday's lineup concludes with something completely different, and one of the biggest, guiltiest pleasures of this year's festival. Viva (9 p.m.; repeats Fri. at 9:50 p.m.) is an homage and send-up of vintage sexploitation flicks courtesy of Anna Biller, a quadruple threat who not only writes, directs and stars in the film, but also designed the sets and costumes, which are arguably the real stars of Viva. The "plot" is, charitably speaking, minimalist — basically just a series of vignettes involving seductions both successful and foiled, evil impresarios, nudist colonies, flaming stereotypes and statuesque housewives vacuuming in high heels and negligees — but Biller pulls it off in style, nailing the look and feel of '70s sexploitation à la Russ Meyer and Radley Metzger. The movie is cleverly color-coded (with a particular affinity for Day-Glo greens and oranges), the '70s fashions and cultural artifacts become witty fetish objects (Swedish meatballs, anyone?), and the wigs and wooden acting are sublimely cheesy.
On Fri., Feb. 29, the lineup begins with another of the festival's better offerings, El Custodio (The Custodian) (5:30 p.m.), a low-key but ultimately devastating film from Argentina. Essentially a character study of a middle-aged bodyguard for a high-ranking politician, El Custodio uses small, deft strokes to paint a meticulously detailed portrait of a man usually seen — or rather, not seen — as more of an accessory than an individual.
With minimal dialogue, measured rhythms and an understated but sure sense of storytelling, director Rodrigo Moreno trains his camera on an invisible man going about his daily routine — eating breakfast, putting on his bulletproof vest, waiting for his boss, falling asleep in front of the TV — until the ordinary is revealed as extraordinary, and the film's mounting undercurrent of tension bubbles over in all directions.
If you're in the mood for something lighter than El Custodio, there's no shortage of possibilities on Friday. American Fork (5:45 p.m.) is a sub-Sundance tragic-comedy revolving around a dysfunctional family and an obscenely obese kid who just can't seem to catch a break. Too much of the movie is devoted to cheap shots in which we're encouraged to gawk at the fat kid making a fool of himself, but American Fork eventually finds a fairly satisfying balance between bitter and sweet, and features a wonderfully nasty performance from Stephen Baldwin (one of several Baldwins inexplicably monopolizing this year's GFF films).
Friday's schedule concludes with two documentaries I wasn't able to preview but sound promising. Making Tom Ze' (7:50 p.m.) is a feature-length look at the brilliant and controversial Brazilian musician, while The Good Fight (8 p.m.) is a portrait of coach Bobby Bowden and the Florida State Seminoles directed by acclaimed filmmaker George Butler (Pumping Iron, Endurance).
The schedule for Sat., March 1 begins with the Florida premier of Requiem, a 40-minute documentary on sharks that will be screening at the Florida Aquarium (11:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.). Saturday is also the day you catch a number of the free panel discussions offered at this year's GFF, including "Marketing and Distribution of Your Film" (1:30 p.m.), "Budget Techniques for Producing Your Film" (2:30 p.m.) and "Working in 16mm" (3:30 p.m.). Also slated for Saturday is "Campus Movie Fest," a program of shorts by student filmmakers (7 p.m.); and "Women's Power Hour" (5:30), a selection of films by and about women. Ten at the Top, a profile of notable Tampa women, will be among the shorts shown.
If there is one bona fide masterpiece in this year's festival, Death of a Bureaucrat (Sat., 5 p.m.) is probably it. A marvelous and borderline surreal black comedy in the spirit of Luis Buñuel, this rarely seen 1966 classic from the late, great Tomas Gutierrez Alea (Memories of Underdevelopment) shows us the lengths to which a Cuban widow will go to retrieve a union card her husband was buried with. Laced with a dry sense of the absurd that predates Jim Jarmusch by three decades, Death of a Bureaucrat is a small gem, the likes of which we rarely get to see anymore. I'll be on hand for a post-screening chat about the film.
The highlight of Saturday, for some, will surely be The Flock (7 p.m.), a thriller that stars Richard Gere and Claire Danes that looks about as close as GFF gets to a big, sexy Hollywood movie. There are danger signs, though: The Flock has been sitting on the shelf for ages, only playing (with limited success) overseas, and it may very well show up as a straight-to-DVD release here in the States. That said, the movie's premise sounds darkly intriguing (Gere as an agent mucking about a Seven-ish mish-mash of sexual predators and serial killers), and the director is Andrew Lau, the Hong Kong filmmaker who made the very cool Infernal Affairs movies that Scorsese later transformed into The Departed.
For others, the big show on Sat. will be the 9 p.m. revival of Herschell Gordon Lewis' wonderfully silly, 1963 proto-splatter flick Blood Feast, complete with a personal appearance from H.G. himself and his partner, legendary exploitation producer Drew Friedman. For those who prefer their horror straight up, proceed directly to What We Do Is Secret (9:20 p.m.), a real-life spookfest about seminal L.A. punk band The Germs and monumentally troubled frontman Darby Crash (Shane West, who is surprisingly good here). Both gritty and glossy, the film does for West Coast punk what Velvet Goldmine tried to do for glam-rock, as it observes the iconoclastic Crash self-destructing in epic style. West and director Rodger Grossman will attend the screening.
The festival brings it all home on Sun., March 2 with another eclectic line-up highlighted by the Brazilian comedy Drained (2:20 p.m.); a 2 p.m. matinee of the family-friendly Flyboys (featuring yet another Baldwin brother, and some Hardy Boys adventurers mixing it up with Scorsese-lite gangsters); and The Memory Thief (4:30), an intriguing indie about an emotionally detached tollbooth attendant who becomes obsessed with the Holocaust. Those still wanting more can join their fellow festivalgoers at the closing-night bash and awards ceremony at the Florida Aquarium (7:30). After that, the screens go dark, and you're on your own until next year.
The Gasparilla Film Festival runs from Feb. 27 to March 2 at Tampa Theatre, The Florida Aquarium and Channelside Cinemas, Tampa. For more information, complete film schedules and to purchase tickets, visit gasparillafilmfestival.com.
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 4, 2008.
