Hermosa Beach’s Sunscreen Film Fest to show history of the ‘Ironman,’ and more
“Run Paddle Chug” the opening night feature of the Sunscreen Film Festival, tells the story of the annual Ironman. Image courtesy Robert Enriquez
The marquee at the Hermosa Beach Community Theater will have an unusual set of instructions on Thursday evening. Passersby will be told to “Run Paddle Chug.”
Though perhaps inscrutable to visitors, locals will recognize the words as the sequence of events for Hermosa’s annual Ironman, the beer-soaked beginning to the town’s 4th of July. The words will appear to announce a movie of the same name, which documents the event’s long, proud history.
“Run Paddle Chug” kicks off opening night at the Sunscreen Film Festival West, running Thursday through Sunday. The festival features a mix of smaller independent films, and movies displaying the South Bay’s growing pool of local cinematic talent.
The Sunscreen Film Festival began a decade ago in Florida, a venture of the nonprofit St. Petersburg-Clearwater Film Society, said festival director Robert Enriquez. Enriquez launched the west coast version in 2013. In its first year, screenings took place at the Arclight Theater in Manhattan Beach. But the arrangement “felt too corporate” Enriquez said, and the festival has called the Community Theater home ever since.
Enriquez heads up Manhattan Beach-based Red Baron Talent Management, and has worked on many films. Among his previous works is “The Last Days of Danny Pelvic and the Thrusters,” a coming-of-age story revolving around four surfers, shot mostly in Manhattan. He directed “Run Paddle Chug,” and said was drawn to document the Ironman by a desire to expand the festival’s reach. His experience has taught him that films capturing local events and history tend to have particularly strong appeal.
“We touch on all the history, and we follow different people,” Enriquez said. “And we tail a couple first timers, including a 54-year-old fireman. He did pretty well.”
Once Enriquez began investigating, history began unspooling itself. Over time, he said, different generations crossed paths in the event. Enriquez began by talking to people involved in the current version, and gradually began working his way back.
“I pulled the camera out for people involved like Chris Miller, Annie Seawright and Chris Brown,” he said. “It was a really interesting, organic approach. Some of the early guys knew nothing about it now.”
But thanks to Enriquez, that won’t last long. In an age when content is accessible on an ever increasing variety of screens, festivals are trying to draw eyes by complementing screenings with live events like panels and musical performances. On Thursday night, the festival will gather Ironman participants from throughout the event’s history.
Other panels include Saturday night’s gathering of Hollywood industry insiders. An increasing share of them, Enriquez said, have left the stress of Los Angeles behind for the lifestyle the South Bay offers.
Julie Nunis, executive director of community involvement for the festival, got involved in the festival because she was seeking the satisfaction of cinema, but didn’t want to have to go too far to find it.
“I wanted something local. I was tired of driving up to Hollywood — I have two kids. So I kind of interviewed him,” Nunis said of Enriquez. “I wondered, can there possibly be a really a good industry person down here?”
Many of the filmmakers involved in the festival are local.
Todd Doram, who produced “The Deal,” a short film that will be showing Saturday afternoon, attended Redondo Union High School, as did director Mike Weil. (When he’s not directing or editing, Weil can be found working the door at Abigail and Ocean Bar in downtown Hermosa.) The crew was also made up mostly of South Bay residents.
The film, shot entirely in Hermosa, takes a comedic approach to the social anxiety associated with scoring drugs. The idea came when writer Mark Robinowitz, a college friend of Doram’s, was watching an episode of acclaimed TV show “The Wire.”
“We thought, all these guys had sold drugs to people who had never communicated with a drug dealer before,” he said. “It’s this affluent white couple in their late 20s, and they’re going to communicate at some point. They wonder, ‘Do we text, do we call? Ah, nobody calls anymore.’ They’re totally laboring over this thing that they’ve never done.”
From left to right, Glenn Close, Frank Langella and the recently deceased Anton Yelchin share a moment in “5 to 7,” an independent film that will screen Saturday night at the Sunscreen Film Festival. Image courtesy Robert Enriquez
Another locally produced film is “Till the Aces Come,” a feature about a talented computer engineer who leaves Silicon Valley to work as a small-town mechanic. Manhattan Beach-resident Phillip Cook acts in the film, and serves as producer.
Cook studied theater arts in college and, after graduating, “laid around the beach” in Manhattan and Hermosa. Deciding that he needed to settle down, he became an investment broker. But he stayed involved in community theater and, after tiring of that, turned to film.
Several years ago he auditioned for “Till the Aces Comes,” winning the part of, appropriately, a venture capitalist. Writer and co-star Adam Everett hired a director who shot a version of the film that became mired in dispute. Despondent and thinking that the film would never get released, Everett and Cook were commiserating when they stumbled on the idea of Cook acting as producer. So the Manhattan resident gathered the funds, and they reshoot the film, with Everett serving as director in the second go round.
“Talk about synchronicity,” Cook said. “Adam probably could not have predicted that it just so happened that a guy he cast would wind up producing the movie.”
Hosting the film festival presents unique challenges. The South Bay Film and Music Festival, which took place in June of this year, demonstrated the interest in foreign and independent cinema. But the Community Theater, while centrally located for the South Bay, is also dauntingly large. It holds about 500 people; by contrast, most of the theaters at Manhattan’s Arclight seat about 100 moviegoers.
But like many in the industry, Enriquez believes that the experience of seeing a film in theaters carries special value. He pointed to a film called “Next Goal Wins,” a documentary about the national soccer team for American Samoa. The film, he said, has connected well with audiences, but has struggled to secure a distributor.
“Other than in a theater, people are only going to see it on Netflix,” Enriquez said. “Last time it showed, people were standing and cheering. They’re not going to be doing that from their couch at home.”
For a complete listing of showings at the Sunscreen Film Festival, go to their website:
http://ssffwest.com/