A Silver Lining for the Silver Screen – Robert Enriquez brings his film festival to Hermosa
Robert Enriquez at the Hermosa Beach Community Center, site of the upcoming Sunscreen Film Festival
GLORIA PLASCENCIA, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The South Bay doesn’t lack for smart, culturally hip people, and so it’s a bit of a mystery as to why it’s difficult to establish and maintain a viable theater for plays and musicals and a couple of movie theaters as well.
At the same time, gung-ho individuals have initiated film festivals, yearly events that have lasted a few endless summers and then slipped away, like the Hermosa Beach Short Film Festival that Tom Kearny ran, and with great enthusiasm too. Don Franken and his Method Fest started right here, and later moved up the coast. Barry Hatchet, on the other hand, has been holding his annual Beach Shorts Film Fest for several years. Other attempts are made, such as the British Film Festival Los Angeles; they seem promising, but don’t return.
Right now, the one person who’s been doing something commendable, and successful, is Randy Berler, founder of the South Bay Film Society, which screens new art house movies twice a month at the AMC Rolling Hills 20 in Torrance. He doesn’t seem to have any real competition, but maybe he will now.
Robert Enriquez brings the Sunscreen Film Festival to Hermosa, Oct. 10-12
GLORIA PLASCENCIA, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Robert Enriquez has the right combination of passion and knowledge. He’s a Hermosa resident, works for Red Baron Films in Manhattan Beach, and last year inaugurated the West Coast version of the Sunscreen Film Festival (the parent festival, in the St. Petersburg-Clearwater area of Florida, just marked its ninth anniversary). In 2013, Enriquez screened films in venues in El Segundo and Manhattan Beach, including the ArcLight Cinemas at Rosecrans and Nash.
It was a good learning experience, but Enriquez was not entirely satisfied.
“So I thought, why don’t I pull back and start in the town that I know the best, Hermosa, which is where I live, which is where my daughter goes to school, which is where I do business.”
One has to work more strings than a puppeteer to get a festival of any sort off the ground and running. Enriquez is finding sponsors and getting help from various sources, and these include the Hermosa Arts Foundation. The local school system is also cooperating, and Enriquez points out that a percentage of the proceeds will benefit the schools’ parent-teacher organizations and the like. In short, by way of a little local boosterism, the Sunscreen Film Festival should be a win-win situation.
It takes place over three days – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Oct. 10 to 12, in the Hermosa Beach Community Center. Or, specifically, in the center’s various venues – the Hermosa Beach Playhouse, the Second Story Theatre, and in some of the classrooms.
The opening night film, “Hoovey,” is directed by locally-based Sean McNamara, and it’s about a high school basketball player with a brain tumor – apparently a comeback kid sort of story. McNamara’s previous film was the acclaimed “Soul Surfer.” On the tail end, wrapping up the festival, is “The Human Experiment,” directed by Don Hardy and Dana Nachman, with narration by Sean Penn, that looks at the chemicals in our everyday products (cleansers, shampoo, etc.) that are detrimental to our health.
Filmmaker Brian L. Gillogly and “the real Gidget” – Kathy Kohner Zuckerman. “Accidental Icon” screens on Saturday, Oct. 11
STACEY BELL FOR LEFTPEAK PRODUCTIONS
Taking care of business
These days, as a budding filmmaker, it’s rather easy to send out one’s films. But, because it’s easier for you it’s also easier for everyone else. Enriquez mentions Withoutabox, an online application submission service for film festivals. Apparently the system was a big help for the Sunscreen folks, who wound up with close to 500 entries.
“We have a programmer and a committee that watches all of them,” Enriquez says, “and then we narrow it down.”
How would you like the Sunscreen Film Festival to be known?
“I want us to be known as a festival that has a high success rate as far as getting distribution,” Enriquez replies. “We’re spending a lot of time going through a lot of films, and finding high-quality films that tell good stories that are made with a relatively strong value, so that we can get distribution on those films.”
If that starts happening, where films are being picked up for wider release, Enriquez feels that more filmmakers will submit their work for future festivals.
“The more submissions we get, the better quality I feel we’ll get. The better quality we get, the more tickets we will sell. The more tickets we’ll sell the more we’ll be able to benefit the city, the foundations, and everyone else involved.
“I sat down with the Hermosa Arts Foundation,” he continues, “and those guys are amazing. I’m really excited to be working with them and it’s a situation where we could benefit each other for sure. I’m also about preserving the Hermosa Beach Museum and anything else I can do in this area. I’ve pretty much grown up here, ever since I moved from Florida. I’ve been here over 20 years.”
Enriquez knows that it’s all about building momentum.
“If you don’t set goals you’ll never achieve them,” he says, and imagines Sunscreen branching out into even larger venues: “Maybe next year we’ll be in the Redondo Union High School Auditorium and the year after that at Mira Costa – those are 500- to 1500-seat auditoriums that we could grow into like Sundance or any other large festival.”
Enriquez would also like to see more visibility for his venture.
“I don’t want this film festival to just be a one-time-a-year event,” he says, and this is where the possibility of a screening series comes in, a la Randy Berler and the South Bay Film Society.
But one step at a time, and it’ll all depend on ticket sales and turnout.
“Hoovey” is the opening night feature of the Sunscreen Film Festival
COURTESY THE SUNSCREEN FILM FESTIVAL
Gidget goes Hermosa
Of the 11 feature-length documentaries, one of the more anticipated is “Accidental Icon: The Real Gidget Story,” written, directed, and produced by the South Bay’s Brian L. Gillogly. It’s about the Malibu surfer girl Kathy Kohner, later Kathy Zuckerman, who sparked the Gidget films – the original with Sandra Dee (1959), “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” with Deborah Walley (1961), and of course the TV series with Sally Field (1965).
Looking at these films now, the ocean and the beaches haven’t changed much, but everything else has. Well, that’s what keeps nostalgia in business.
“I met the real Gidget in 1980,” Gillogly says, “when I began researching a feature for ‘Surfer Magazine’ about Hollywood’s long relationship with surfing.” Although the first cut of “Accidental Icon” dates back to 2006, there were copyrighted clips to contend with. The completed film has been screened elsewhere, but never shown in the South Bay. Now it will be, at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 11.
The Sunscreen Film Festival runs from Friday, Oct. 10, to Sunday, Oct. 12, in the Hermosa Beach Community Center, 710 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach. Ticket prices vary, $8 for single films and shorts blocks; $25 for a 1-day pass and $50 for a 3-day pass; and $55 each for the opening night, closing night, and awards party event. There’s a small handling fee per ticket. (25 percent of all VIP badge sales go to Hermosa Valley PTO and Hermosa Beach Educational Foundation). Up to date information is available on the website, ssffwest.com.