ATALE DT

★ THE FLORIDA PRIZE ★
2015 marks the inaugural year of the presentation of the annual award, THE FLORIDA PRIZE. In alternating years the award
will be given to a Florida Film Pioneer (Victor Nunez in 2015) and an Emerging Florida Filmmaker on even years.
VICTOR NUNEZ
A member of the founding boards of the Independent Feature
Project (IFP) and the Sundance Film Institute, Victor Nunez has
been making Indy movies for over four decades.
Born in Deland, Nunez received his degrees at Antioch College and
University of California at Los Angeles and began his work in the 1970s
on educational and industrial films while still managing to make three
award winning shortsTaking Care of Mother Baldwin (1970), Charley
Benson’s Return to the Sea (1972), and A Circle in the Fire (1974).
His feature film debut was Gal Young’Un (1979), financed with grants
from the NEA and the Florida Arts Council. Based on the short story by
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the movie is set in the Prohibition Era Florida
and is about a widowed Florida woman, her new opportunistic bootlegger
husband and his young girlfriend. Starring Dana Preu, the film was
invited to the New York, Toronto, and London film fests as well as the
Director’s Fortnight in Cannes. In the NY Times, Vincent Canby called
it, “an astonishingly good first feature, written, directed, photographed,
edited and produced by Victor Nunez...I know very little about Mr. Nunez
except that he lives and works in Florida, but if he’s representative of
our new regional film makers, things are looking up.”
His next film was A Flash of Green (1984) adapted from a John
D. MacDonald novel and financed by grants from the Rockefeller
Foundation and PBS American Playhouse. Set in the early ‘60s
along the Gulf Coast of Florida, A Flash of Green tells of a tormented
reporter drawn into aiding a self-serving county commissioner in an
underhanded landfill development. Starring Ed Harris, Blair Brown,
and Richard Jordan, the film was shown at the NY and Toronto Film
Festivals, Cannes and on PBS American Playhouse.
Nunez used a windfall from a great-aunt to finance Ruby in Paradise
(1993), which starred then-newcomer Ashley Judd playing a
young woman fleeing a bad relationship in the back woods of Tennessee
who ends up working in a souvenir shop in Panama City.
Again the film was shown at the NY and Toronto Fests and Director’s
Fortnight. The film jointly won the 1993 Grand Jury Prize for Drama
at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected by Roger Ebert as
one of his “Top Ten” films of the year. Ashley won the Independent
Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her performance.
In 1997, Ulee’s Gold, produced through Jonathan Demme’s company,
garnered Victor’s widest audience and earned star Peter Fonda the Golden
Globe and NY Film Critics Award as well as an Oscar Nomination for Best
Actor. Set in the tupelo honey-producing region of the Apalachicola River,
Peter played a third-generation beekeeper with a host of personal problems.
Praising the star and director in The NYTimes, Janet Maslin called
the film, “beautiful and heartfelt, an oasis of humanity in a season of furious
hyperbole. Simple almost to a fault and yet effortlessly wrenching, it shows
nothing more than the spiritual reawakening of a hard-bitten loner. Yet the
star and filmmaker make this story resonate in moving, meaningful ways.”
Coastlines (2002) plays out a messy triangle between three childhood
friends. Starring Josh Brolin, Tim Olyphant and Sarah Wynter.
Nunez’s characters and stories have often been described as
emotionally resonant, multi-layered character driven narratives. Emmanuel
Levy, in his book “Cinema of Outsiders”, states “Integrating
Florida’s unique landscape and spirit, Nunez’s fully realized drama
represents American regional cinema at its very best.
A quick sojourn in New Mexico as a “hired gun” directing Rubin
Blades as a father dying of cancer in Spoken Word (2009), while a
great adventure, did seem a long way from the Gulf Coast and left
the question of “what next,” wide open.
Victor Nunez was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame
in 2008, and his biography at Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs
states, “Victor Nunez has been called a national treasure of regional
independent filmmaking. A visionary writer, director, cinematographer
and producer, Nunez’s gripping work fuses character and place
in portraits of his home state of Florida.”
He is currently teaching directing at Florida State in his hometown
of Tallahassee. “I don’t know what’s next, really. I’m not sure I
recognize Florida anymore, but I am very grateful for this award.
Perhaps it will inspire me to find my way back to my real Florida
home one more time again.”
Mr. Nunez will attend a FLaSH oF GReeN and receive The Florida Prize at The FLIFF Gala, Saturday, November 21.
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