This weekend marks the debut of a mini-festival of films shot in Florida, and it’s just the latest cultural gathering whipped up by Vero native Jared Thomas.
Thomas, the young founder of the downtown gallery Project Space 1785, has become something of an accidental impresario. In collaboration with Miami investor Neli Santamarina, who runs the larger gallery Raw Space at Edgewood next door, Thomas has turned Project Space into variously an art gallery, as when it first opened with a series of show from Thomas and two co-founders; a performance art studio, as when artist Taylor Beatty publicly took the portraits one night of random recruits through social media and then turned them into a later show; an intimate black box theater, as when the short play “Recess Time!” – which Thomas co-wrote – was staged in August. And Monday, he has organized an evening of live music and art with two New York bands here for Miami’s Art Basel, plus a Vero composer of electronica.
First, though, the launch of a month-long series of noted independent films, directed by nationally known filmmakers and made in and about Florida.
Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., is Amy Seimetz’s “Sun Don’t Shine.” Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” screens on Dec. 9 and Dec. 10; and Kelly Reichardt’s “River of Grass” rounds up the series on Dec. 16 and Dec. 17.
A 2011 graduate of Indian River Charter High’s visual and performing arts program, Thomas has an insider’s interest in the craft of filmmaking. Since opening the gallery in January of last year, Thomas has worked with New York-based filmmakers, mostly at entry-level jobs but on increasingly well-known films.
Last summer he was part of a four-person team with the art department for “American Honey.” That movie was awarded the Prix du Jury at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. It was released in the U.S. just this fall.
Thomas notes that before there was Hollywood, there was Jacksonville, Fla. That in the early 1900s was the first movie studio town for the New York-based motion picture industry. With the exception of Miami and Orlando, today Florida is not a destination for most filmmakers.
Unless you hail from Florida, as Seimetz and Reichardt do.
Or if you are attracted to Florida’s cultural dissociation, as Jarmusch appears to have been.
As Thomas puts it, “It’s a state that maybe is not necessarily polarized, but it has a reputation, for better or worse. And I think both sides are accurate.”
Amy Seimetz, who grew up in the Tampa Bay area, shot “Sun Don’t Shine” there; the film’s memorable dénouement takes place at Weeki Wachee Springs. Starring Kate Lyn Sheil and Kentucker Audley as two lovers with an awful secret to hide (and dispose of), the movie premiered in 2012 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
“It’s simple but powerful, and it’s filmed in Florida,” says Thomas.
“Anyone who has ever been here knows there are unique things about this state,” says the Vero native. “I don’t think anybody is indifferent to Florida. It’s a state that has a reputation, for better or worse.”
Take, for example, Jim Jarmusch. His 1984 film “Stranger Than Paradise” takes viewers on a haphazard road trip from New York to Florida by way of Cleveland. John Lurie and Richard Edson star as Willie and Eddie, two young men of little means and fewer prospects. Budapest-born Ezster Balint plays Eva, the young woman with whom both men are intrigued; she ultimately becomes the reason Willie and Eddie hit the road.
“Stranger Than Paradise” was Jarmusch’s first major film; now considered an indie classic, it was awarded the Camera d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and was named Best Film at the National Society of Film Critics in the following year. Vero Beach Museum of Art’s film studies instructor Warren Obluck included the film some 15 years ago.
“River of Grass” was the 1994 debut film of director Kelly Reichardt. Like the film’s protagonist, Cozy, Reichardt‘s father was a cop in Dade County. And while Reichardt never crossed, in Cozy’s words, “that straight line that Dad called the law,” she did use her experience of police work in South Florida to flavor her movie.
In it, Lisa Bowman plays lonesome housewife Cozy, who falls for a ne’er-do-well named Lee (Larry Fessenden). The two soon find themselves running from the law after a house break-in goes wrong. The trouble is, neither of them have enough cash to make a proper getaway.
Project Space 1785 is in a shopping at the corner of Old Dixie Highway and 18th Street near downtown Vero Beach. Tickets for the series can be purchased at ProjectSpace1785.BigCartel.com. There will be a limited amount of tickets available at the door.
