- [Robert] Yeah. We're out here today on First Street Pier. This is pretty much
where it all started.
- [Announcer] Topping the list of the great and famous South Beach Pier
fishermen is a 20-year old Miami Dade Community College student, Rene de Dios.
- [Valentina] Miami Dade College students, Robert Ramos and Pedro Gomez take viewers
on a nostalgic journey through Miami Beach in their short documentary,
Rene de Dios and the South Beach Shark Club. Told through the eyes of local
shark fishermen, the film is a coming of age story for the subjects and the city.
♪ [music] ♪
- This was a story that I grew up with and it was a story that I was told by my
uncles and my dad, but it was also something that I got to live going
down to First Street and fishing at night on the boardwalk. It's just something that
I felt like was almost like a campfire story that I was told as a kid,
and it's just something I felt like would transition very well into film.
- The documentary was created as part of their curriculum at MDC's School
of Entertainment and Design Technology. Housed at MDC's north campus,
students receive technical, theoretical, and practical
hands-on experience with degrees in film, television, music business, and more.
As part of the bachelor program, students spend the year producing,
filming, and editing short films.
- [Tommy] There is no place that you can get this much exposure to equipment,
to industry techniques than at Miami Dade College.
- Taking classes at Miami Dade College, part of the bachelor's program
for film production, it's been fantastic.
It's everything from pre-production to post-production.
- [Pedro] The lessons that we've taught, from permits, how to handle everything the
legal way, screen writing, you know, they've all been invaluable tools that,
you know, I highly recommend.
- In the spring, the students put their work to the test, submitting their film
to CinemaSlam, Miami Film Festival's film school competition. Open to any student
enrolled in participating South Florida colleges and universities,
CinemaSlam aims to showcase student films. The result? Rene de Dios took home
several awards this year: Best Director, Best Writing, Best Technical Achievement,
and the grand prize, the Cinema Slam 2018 champion
along with the Sara Fuller scholarship.
- It felt unreal, you know? I was very confident going in but until it
actually happened, and even when it happened, like, I couldn't believe it.
- They deserved the awards they won. I know that our film program is the best
in South Florida and when we sweep awards at competitions like this,
it just proves to me that what we do is worthwhile.
- But the Miami Beach of 1960s is unrecognizable to the city thousands
visit today. So how do you tell a story that's long relegated to memory?
- The fact that I found all these archival footage actually had a lot to do with,
you know, making the film as well. Like, that let us know that there was enough
content to actually produce a film that was about something that happened,
you know, 30, 40 years ago.
- The students discovered the footage in the Lynn and Louis II Wolfson Florida
Moving Image Archives, located at MDC's Wolfson campus.
An official moving image repository and archives of the State of Florida,
the Wolfson archives has over 35,000 hours of video tapes and 23 million feet
of film, making it one of the largest institutions of its kind in the
United States.
- And they basically are holding a bunch of archives like different news reels and
home videos, and it's a very, very cool resource that Miami Dade College
has that allowed us to make this film.
- More stories depicting Florida's rich history will take center stage
at next year's Miami Film Festival. Thanks to a generous gift from the Lynn
and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation. The gift of $127,500 will provide general
program and sponsorship support for Cinema Slam to establish several awards for the
2019 and 2020 competitions including a category for Best Film Featuring
Archival Material.
- Yeah. I think the fact that they are going to open up the archives
for other filmmakers, it's going to make it a lot easier
for people to have access and to just know that it exists, because I feel like a lot
of people don't even know that there are all these stories from old Miami and old
Miami Beach that we actually have access to through these archives.
- The students are not done with their documentary yet and are now working
to turn their short film into a feature.
- The reason why we're making this film into a full-length feature film is because
there were just too many stories to tell that we couldn't touch on in the
short film.
- A lot of stories had to be cut out. You could write a book on all the stories
that these guys have of their times growing up.
- Alumni from SEDT are making a name for themselves in the local industry and these
two will definitely continue that legacy with plans to collaborate on even more
projects in the future.
- I'm motivated for more, you know? I feel like it's not enough.
We still need to prove ourselves.
- For MDC In Focus, I'm Valentina Gonzalez.