Before Antonina Kerguelén even begins production on her senior film, her work will be on display for Savannah residents, industry professionals and the SCAD community to see. The fourth-year film and television student, and Bogotá, Colombia native, wrote and directed the nine minute short film, “The Coffee Vendor,” an official SCAD Savannah Film Festival selection.
Kerguelén actually wrote the narrative–a blind coffee vendor struggling to reclaim custody of his adopted son–for a class project during her sophomore year at SCAD.
“The story behind the script is kind of wild, and I owe a lot of it to my professor, Amy Lerner-Maddox,” she said. Kerguelén explained how she had a completely different idea for her project, but a class discussion about how different countries are portrayed in the media inspired a change of plans.
“I was really upset that people were talking about NARCOS, the Netflix series, and how it made Columbia look and feel. And I was like, ‘you know, I wish there were more films that portrayed Colombia in a different way,'” she remarked.
“And then on pitch day I pitched my previous idea, and the professor was like, ‘No, don’t do that. Do something that’s in your country.’ Like stick up for your word, you know?” Kerguelén said.
“And so I came up with a different concept overnight and I pitched it and she loved it.”
Then, somewhat on a whim, Kerguelén submitted her script to the Bogotá Short Film Festival. She “didn’t love” her script at the time, but the too-good-to-be-true call for entry requirements, and a little more encouragement from Lerner-Maddox, were enough to convince her.
“The requirements were that you had to be a colombian filmmaker, you have to be an emerging filmmaker, and you have to give a script that could be shot in Bogotá. So everything felt right,” said Kerguelén.
The Bogotá Short Film Festival, or BOGOSHORTS, functions as a grant agency for emerging filmmakers. “You send your script and you go through a long process,” said Kerguelén.
“You go to the festival and have meetings with professionals and pitch your film formally to a board of screenwriters, directors, producers that are pretty big in Colombia. And then they pick one person or project to fund like a fellowship.”
Kerguelén wrote her film in Lerner-Maddox’s Intro to Dramatic Writing class in the fall of 2015; pitched – and won – at the BOGOSHORTS Festival in December 2015; and then premiered “The Coffee Vendor” at the festival in December 2016.
Kerguelén on set. Image courtesy of Paolo Nigrinis.
Though Kerguelén is still a student, “The Coffee Vendor” is a professional film, and she had to learn to manage and direct other professionals. “The process begins with a professional screenwriter giving you feedback and helping you draft your script until it’s ready to shoot. And then you have all of these mentor things with a producer . . . So I did all of that and I shot my film last summer, the summer of 2016.”
Kerguelén said the biggest challenge in filming was learning to direct with confidence even when things weren’t ideal on set. “It was the first time I shot something that big and the first time I shot something out of the United States, Kerguelén said, “and then it was like go to Colombia, figure out how to shoot in this city, figure out how to shoot in Spanish, GO!”
“It feels awesome, honestly [to represent Colombia through her film]. And the part that I like the most about it – even though, hopefully, we play in more festivals in the U.S. and in Europe – is that it feels amazing that Savannah is the first stop. It started because of a really heated discussion in a classroom in Savannah, and now it’s going to be playing on the big screen here in Savannah.”
“The Coffee Vendor” will make its U.S. premier tomorrow at 9 a.m. at the SCAD Museum of Art, as part of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival Global Shorts Forum.
