Short film shot locally has homecoming at Long Island Film Fest

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A short movie shot entirely in Southampton back in 2007 is finally having its homecoming this Friday as the Long Island Film Festival comes to Sag Harbor.

“The Popcorn Man,” a 25-minute movie Southampton native Carlos Ferrer shot exclusively in his hometown when he was a junior studying film at SUNY Purchase College, won the award for Best Student Short at last year’s festival and it’s seeing some replay this fall, including a screening on Friday, November 13, at Bay Street Theatre.

Mr. Ferrer said last week that it “blows his mind” that a movie he made for his junior thesis film has gotten such a great response and continuing attention.

“I didn’t really expect it to go to too many places,” he admitted. “So this thing has just been going for awhile now. People really seem to like it. The festival really seems to like it.”

The film festival is on the road this fall, with three stops on Long Island and even one in Ireland—“The Popcorn Man” and three other Long Island Film Festival entries were screened last week at the Kerry Film Festival in Kerry, Ireland.

“The Popcorn Man” is about a man who reconnects with his family by breathing life back into an old movie theater that once belonged to his father.

“Being in film school, it’s like a lot of people are always making very heavy dramatic pieces about broken relationships, different character studies,” Mr. Ferrer recalled. “I wanted to do something that was a little different, a little light. Maybe something a little more Hollywood as well.”

He said there is nothing wrong with heavy films but they are not for him, even though that’s what his instructors and classmates expected. “They want to see you do something different,” he said. “It’s not really as much about entertainment and just giving people a good time. And that’s what’s important to me. People’s lives are stressed out. They want to go to the movies; they want to have a good time, sort of distract themselves for two hours.”

He hopes that’s the effect “The Popcorn Man” will have on the Bay Street audience Friday.

A landmark that will be familiar to many of the locals who attend the festival, the United Artists theater on Hampton Road in Southampton Village, plays the part of the Sovereign movie theater in “The Popcorn Man.”

“It’s just a beautiful theater; the one place I can think of that really looked magical,” Mr. Ferrer said of choosing the iconic location for his movie. “The lights at night—that’s really why I chose it. Because when those lights go on at night it gives this glow, and that was important for me.”

The Southampton theater may not be immediately recognizable because, using digital effects, Mr. Ferrer created a Sovereign marquee for the theater and superimposed it over the Southampton United Artists lettering.

Mr. Ferrer mostly cast “The Popcorn Man” by holding auditions in New York City, but one star of the film, Liam D’Arcy, who plays the young son of the main character, was discovered at the hair salon Mr. Ferrer’s mother runs in Bridgehampton.

One day while visiting his mother, Marisa Ferrer, at her business, Vincent Da Silva at Gil Ferrer Salon, he saw Liam there and thought the boy would be perfect for the part. And Liam’s brother, Brian, was also cast in a small role.

The award-winning short was not Mr. Ferrer’s first time making a movie in Southampton. He began work when he was 16 on a feature film his sister, Sabrina, wrote, “Scallop Pond,” named for the pond in Southampton. He had turned 18 by the time the film was put in the can, and the work paid off when he took home the Best Student Feature award at the Long Island Film Festival.

“It was really my first big encounter with a film,” Mr. Ferrer said, noting that there were more than 100 people involved. He had started making movies when he was just 10 years old and in 1999, at the age of 14, he created his own production company, CGF Films.

He is now in postproduction on his second feature film, “Target,” which he bills as “a thriller about a young woman who is called to participate in a medical study, later realizing that the people involved are not who they seem.” The film, which he started to work on two years ago, is set and filmed entirely in New York City. He wrote and directed it and served as his own director of photography and is now editing it himself.

Admission to the Long Island Film Festival’s stop at Bay Street is $12. Tickets available at the door only. Film festival screenings begin at 4 p.m.;“The Popcorn Man” is scheduled for 6:05 p.m. Best Picture winner “Goyband” is scheduled for 8:10 p.m. followed by a Q&A with director Christopher Grimm. For more information, visit lifilm.org. “The Popcorn Man” can also be viewed on Mr. Ferrer’s website, cgffilms.com.