With a little help from The Key West Film Society and The Studios of Key West
World Premiere is set for Tuesday 15 April at The Tropic Cinema
Over the past few months, a handful of local film and video makers have been quietly shooting, editing, and producing new short films in response to the 1978 local classic, The Key West Picture Show. Now thirty years old, the original film by B. J. Martin serves as an inspiring overview of our island’s past and a humorous look at the unique cultural aspects of our Southernmost community. After accepting the challenge put forth by The Studios of Key West and the Key West Film Society late last year, a diverse group of modern-day media artists are about to give us time capsules of our own.
“The original film captured colorful local characters, quirky historical features, and real commentary from real people,” said Elena Devers, project coordinator at The Studios. “And we wanted to find a way to do that again, in the here and now...and use the art of the short video to leave something behind for posterity.”
The Return of the Key West PIcture Show project was designed around that notion, and has been generously sponsored by the island’s Margaritaville Restaurant and Store. The public will have a chance to see the new crop of locally-inspired films when the 2008 Picture Show premieres on Tuesday 15 April.
Mark Slater, newly re-instated Managing Director of the Key West Film Society's Tropic Cinema said, "We are delighted that The Studios of Key West has developed this film program, and I sense the competitive entertainment offered by our local filmmakers will be fierce. Everyone interested in the cultural life of Key West will want to see these captured images. We are delighted to be the venue for this unique premiere!"
B.J. Martin, whose Southernmost Films guided the original Key West Picture Show in 1977-78, had this to say “I recognize a lot names on the list of film-makers bringing their work to the premiere. A couple of them grew up playing hide-and-seek in my backyard, back when we were making the original!”
The new project gives reverence to the 30-year old film, which told about live conchs, lush jungles and tropical sex drives, struggling artists, wrecker families, musical conchs, eye-brow houses and grunt-bone alley, Cuban bakeries, baseball, fighting and marching conchs, and the early days of the sunset celebration. Participating film-makers were given no restrictions, other than to create short films of between 5 and 15 minutes that reveal something about modern-day Key West.
“I especially like the fact that participants considered any and all approaches in terms of style, content and format, with no restrictions,” said Martin. “After all, eclecticism is a hallmark of island life.”
Film-maker Quincy Perkins spent nearly 4 months creating his new four-minute stop-motion piece, The Lightness of Mario, which he calls the first animated short film to capture the magic of Key West.
"Animation is so different from other forms of filmmaking since every frame must be specifically calculated,” he remarked. “It is closer to mathematics than filmmaking, and I managed to create about one minute per month."
Videographer Marcela Morgan, upon learning of the project, decided to edit her long-form film, Key West: When Paradise Was Ours, down to an under seven-minute short. Thanks to Morgan’s camera, viewers might get a new word or two from Coffee Butler, Lou Pineda, Anna Weekley, Buddy Chavez, Papo Quesada, and other long-time Conchs.
“Like my feature-length documentary, the short version features the generation who grew up in Key West during The Great Depression, describing the days when the island had an abundance of crawfish, tropical fruit trees in everyone's backyard, conga lines down Duval Street, and everyone knew one another.”
Film-makers Karen Leonard and her son Jonathan Meyers took a different path. Their new film, Latitude 24 Longitude Paradise, is a five-minute narrative exploration of a quintessential tourist’s odyssey in Key West, set to original music by Larry Smith with vocals by Kathleen Peace.
Mare Contrare’s 15-minute contribution is called Step Into Paradise, and features Sid Goldman, Warren Benjamin and Nic Pontecorva. Her short is a study of film legend Stan Brackage, in which she tries to incorporate the subtext of how we get to Paradise, namely places like this island at the end of the road.
“Your mind takes you places your feet can't, but your feet take you places your mind cannot imagine,” she says. “Why do people come to Key West. Is it because their feet bring them?”
Mike Marrero and David L. Sloan also began with a narrative idea, based around a fictitious locally-themed gameshow. Their film touches on real estate development and the hospitality industry, before ending up in Key West’s often neglected neighbor. The 15-minute short is called The Stock Island Picture Show.
“This project took me to places I couldn’t even imagine,” says Sloan, “and not all of them were pretty.”
The audience will be the judge of that, when The Return of the Key West Picture Show and a slew of new local films and videos have their premiere at the Tropic Cinema, April 15 at 6pm. Tickets are $25, and can now be purchased at The Tropic or The Studios of Key West. Special guest at the one-night only event will be B. J. Martin, now based in New Smyrna, who will be seated among the eclectic group of 2008 film-makers.
"I think you all have had too good a time with this project," said Martin. "But you know, Southernmost Films was feeling the same energy thirty years ago. The Return of the Key West Picture Show in 2008, how could I miss that!"
For details and information, please call 296-0458.
