Remember that classic moment from all those old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movies? I'm thinking about that inevitable scene where one of the gang, in a flash of inspiration, suddenly gets up and shouts, "Hey kids, let's put on a show!"
That's sort of how the Tambay Film and Video Festival strikes me. That's not to say that the festival's promoters are naive or frivolous or otherwise amateurish, and it certainly doesn't imply that they're about to produce their event in a barn (Tampa Theatre, last time we checked, is a long way from somebody's hayloft). Still, there is some room for comparison.
The Tambay Film and Video Festival, which kicks off on Thursday, March 8, at Tampa Theatre, seems to have been born more of a sheer passion to put on a film event than of a specific idea of what that event should be. The festival is the brainchild of Leora Chai, who seems to be as passionate about films as anybody around. All film festivals fight an uphill battle during their first few years, but Chai's struggle to make the Tambay Festival fly has been a particularly excruciating one.
The fledgling event has had to prove itself every inch of the way, fighting for sponsors, fighting to lure in volunteers to do the grunt work, fighting to get enough high quality submissions, fighting for critical credibility, fighting to get the word out on its existence. In the process of all this struggling, an identity — a personality, if you will — has gradually emerged, shaping and defining this brand new festival.
That identity starts at the most basic, grassroots level, with a selection of works by Florida filmmakers. The movies in the Spotlight on Florida series include a selection of inventive shorts by student filmmaker Patrick Creel of Clearwater; former Tampa resident Robert Fedor's boy-and-his-dog adventure, Bring Him Home (starring Edward Asner); Z; The Four of Us; the goofy horror spoof The Bags; and the uneven but extremely ambitious To Kill a Lawyer (more on these last two titles in a moment). Many of these filmmakers will be attending the festival and should be available for informal chats and brain-picking throughout the week at various impromptu, post-screening get-togethers.
The home-grown theme continues with a catch-all seminar on low-budget filmmaking, the new digital cinema, entertainment law and any number of other topics sure to be of interest to aspiring local movie-makers. The seminar takes place at 4:20 p.m. on Sunday, March 11, and is free of charge. Later that evening, the festival winds down with an awards banquet at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tambay is a juried film festival (a rarity for Tampa Bay), and the winning films in a dozen or so categories will be announced during the banquet.
Almost certain to be among those winners is Legacy, an Oscar-nominated documentary on an inner city, African-American family that survives an overwhelming amount of heartbreak and personal tragedy, going on to claim a bright, triumphant future for its individual members. The film has an intimate yet intense approach that's simply riveting. Legacy screens at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 10, and shouldn't be missed.
My other favorite film in this festival, Sunshine Hotel, also belongs to the dreaded D-Word category. A documentary on a century-old flophouse on Manhattan's Bowery, Sunshine Hotel chronicles the lives of the human driftwood who live there — men like Tyrone, who stands ranting in the lobby all day long; or the garlic-addict guy who gets high on a 25-clove-a-day habit; or Vic, an ex-student of art and philosophy who's sunk under the unbearable weight of his own thoughts. Sunshine Hotel offers stories, characters and dramas as uniquely unforgettable as any you'll find in fiction. The film screens at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 8.
Other highlights of the festival include Milk Punch (5:30 p.m. Saturday, March 10), writer-director Erik Gunneson's Slacker-like assortment of loosely strung-together vignettes, several of which eventually collide and come together in the form of an extended chase. The movie's low budget frequently shows in ways not altogether appealing, but Milk Punch still manages to be one of the festival's more oddly entertaining efforts. Another ultra-low budget indie, The Bags (10 a.m. March 10), recalls that inscrutable, tenderly poetic scene with the drifting bag in American Beauty, only with the bags re-imagined as evil, flesh-eating entities out to destroy humankind. Oh yeah, and it's a comedy.
One of the most technically accomplished films in the entire festival is To Kill a Lawyer (a.k.a. Stavro), a story of faith and personal crisis. Directed by local filmmaker Gino Cabanas and starring co-screenwriter Steve Stavrakis (who has some major eyebrows that would put Peter Gallagher's to shame) this is a real movie-movie, beautifully photographed with remarkably high production values. Some of the writing and acting is a bit self-conscious and occasionally even clumsy, but this is still a very promising and watchable effort (8 p.m. March 10).
Writer-director William Pace's Charming Billy (10:15 p.m. Friday, March 9) asks the question, "Why would a nice, clean-cut kid with a promising future wind up at the top of a water tower picking off bystanders with a high-powered rifle?" You probably won't discover the answer in Pace's atmospheric and competently produced film, but you will find lots of brooding self-searching and a climax that's just short of shattering. Finally, two other documentaries worth catching are The Witness (5:30, March 9), a moving but somewhat static account of a tough Bronx boy who becomes an animal rights activist, and Old Man River (10 a.m. March 9 and 3 p.m. March 10), a record of Cyndy Fujikawa's engaging but somewhat glib, one-woman stage show about her late father.
Welcome to the
Neighborhood
A moment of silence for the Bay area's former premier video-DVD store, Laser Time Video. The perennial Best of the Bay winner bit the dust a few weeks ago, after struggling for some time to hold its own in a market that it helped created — and that, paradoxically, had simply become too big for its own good.
It's a variation on the same old horror story that's driven any number of small, indie stores (like South Tampa Bay Video Vista) out of business over the past few years: Laser Time was, ultimately, simply unable to compete with Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and all the other big chain stores who jumped onto the DVD bandwagon in the wake of the format's skyrocketing success. Add to that equation the cutthroat prices available at numerous online movie sites, and it was only a matter of time before Laser Time gave up the ghost.
And yet, from the ashes of gnarly death comes some very interesting new life. You'll find some of Laser Time's extensive DVD stock scattered among the inventory of a brand new store that's just opened in Tampa's Ybor City. The store is called Video Mayhem and in all probability it's like nothing you've ever seen before.
Owner Stephen Biro stocks an assortment of videos and DVDs from all over the world, with an emphasis on the rare, the unusual, the extreme and, from time to time, the shocking. "Our store is rated R," explains Biro, by which he means that no one under 17 will even be allowed through the door unless accompanied by an adult. But don't assume from the "R"-rated policy that Video Mayhem carries nothing but gritty horror and verite trauma-flicks: Biro has suppliers in Europe and elsewhere who keep his store stocked with the very latest Japanese cult films, Hong Kong action DVDs and all sorts of other esoteric goodies — not the least of which is a stash of honest-to-gosh import DVDs of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (this is the real thing, folks; it's not yet officially available in the U.S., but this is a bona fide release and definitely not a bootleg). Everything in the store is available for sale or for rent and, yes, they definitely do take special requests. If you don't see it, ask.
Video Mayhem is at 1803 N. 22nd St., just up the street from The Columbia restaurant. It's a tiny storefront, so don't blink or you'll miss it. Store hours are 1-10 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 1-11 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, and 1-6 p.m. Sunday. Call 813-248-4666.
