Snakebite film festival

Yuri Makino had to use a dolphin, hair stylist and—yes—pineapple in her short. (Credit: Makino)

Cinema La Placita

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You know economic times are getting tough when 15 Tucson filmmakers are willing to write, film, edit and produce a five-minute video each, just to get a little grub in their bellies. And gallery operator David Aguirre is an opportunist who would never let a good recession go to waste.

Aguirre sent out a call to hungry artists and filmmakers last month offering to buy one snakebite sandwich from Cup Café for every filmmaker who would sign a napkin contract to produce a five-minute film for the Snakebite film festival.

The catch is (the deal sounds too good to be true, right?) Aguirre outlines on the napkin three things that must be in the film. These can range from a specific location to a kind of pie, to a dolphin, pineapple or skateboard—all for a sandwich.

“We’re trying to help them out,” Aguirre jokes one afternoon at Tooley’s Café on Congress Street, where he has recently taken over management. “They let us buy them lunch and, in exchange, they produce a film for us.”

While Aguirre concedes the payout may not be great, filmmakers keep the film’s rights, and get to show at The Screening Room downtown, a longtime, respected venue for local filmmakers.

They also get to help a good cause, Aguirre says. The festival is a benefit for Dinnerware Artspace, which Aguirre runs, and The Screening Room's new marquee. The ongoing fundraising by Aguirre and others to rennovate the theater received some matching funds from the city, and the facelift should be completed in the fall.

As a professor of media arts at the University of Arizona, Yuri Makino took the invitation to the Snakebite fest as a challenge. The requirements Aguirre set on her film—include a pineapple, a hairstylist and a dolphin—are much like the assignments she gives her students and she says it was “freeing to have those limitations.”

Makino has been involved with The Screening Room through the media arts department and says it holds an important position for the diverse independent film community in Tucson.

“Getting the marquee and even the fundraising around the marquee is giving The Screening Room a lot of attention, well-deserved attention,” she says. “I think it’s making people more aware of The Screening Room and the marquee will give it a stronger presence downtown.”

The sandwich that made the festival possible, Cup Café’s Snakebite, gets its name from the chili-rubbed, free-range chicken breast (which gives it the bite), and is complemented by melted jack cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion and served on a toasted bun with the filmmaker’s choice of sides—fries, a cup of soup, garden salad, potato salad, fruit or Asian slaw—all for $9. The Cup gave Aguirre a $400 tab for the lunches.

It’s a hearty sandwich, and a delicious lunch, according to filmmaker Jeremey Harkin, who signed a work-for-food contract with Aguirre. But, Harkin adds, a five-minute video is “damn hard to make."

It was the five-minute format, not the strange request for a lemon meringue pie, Scott Avenue and a cowboy rapper to be included in the film, that made Harkin’s “Country Love,” difficult to complete. 

The plot came naturally, says Harkin. A cowboy rapper is trying to bring the music his grandfather started during the 1849 gold rush, when miners used rhythm and rhyme to communicate, back to its roots. The final showdown between DJ Country Love and another rapper happens on Scott Avenue and is settled with a lemon meringue pie.

Harkin, who’s first film, the feature-length "Ockham’s Razor," debuted at the Loft Cinema in April, doesn’t question whether he and his editor, Matt Love—who's also the film’s cowboy rapper and a senior at Sahuaro High School where Harkin works as an English teacher—got shortchanged for their work.

“Matt Love did all the editing,” Harkin says. “I directed the movie and told him what I want and what I don’t want, but he did all the computer stuff and all the editing—he did all the work on that end, so it was only fair and just that he get half the sandwich.”