Ramon Pesante believes that filmmaking and art should always be personal and collaborative and this is reflected in the way he tells this story. His film Playing Sam explores themes of heritage, mental health, and sexuality with a frank and unapologetic depiction of an empowered Latina woman.
by Belton DeLaine-Facey
Feature film Playing Sam, directed by Ramon Pesante, is an official selection of New York City’s 12th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival. Playing Sam is a semi-autobiographical story that follows Samantha as she struggles to fit into Hollywood’s narrow standards of beauty and ethnicity.
One of the benefits of being an artist is having a place to channel your feelings and frustrations. For director Ramon Pesante, that channeling resulted in a heartfelt film. Describing it as semi-autobiographical, Pesante used the film to celebrate his Latino filmmaking community, in which they build each other up while also bringing awareness to issues many face. Despite the difficulties that come from creating his low budget feature debut, he made sure to keep it a labor of love and collaboration.
Pesante got his first exposure to filmmaking doing marketing work for BET, where he came into contact with a lot of filmmakers who were able to sustain their day jobs while pursuing their passions during evenings and weekends. He soon started making short films of his own and, like Sam, found his home in the Latino filmmaking community. “What’s great about that is when you make short films, those communities start coming to you. And then, by going to film festivals I started tapping into so many artists, comedians, writers, and creators within my community…Everyone’s watching what everyone’s doing and everyone’s watching what you’re doing to see if you’re doing it.”
As he connected with his Latino filmmaker community, there were similar struggles many of them faced when trying to advance and move up in their careers. As he describes it, much of it comes down to many decision makers and gatekeepers not understanding the culture or being unable to appreciate what someone can add creatively because they’re only being looked at for one thing.
He developed the titular character with actress and co-writer, Jenni Ruiza, pulling from both their shared and unique experiences. One of their biggest shared struggles that became part of Sam was being Latino filmmakers who don’t speak Spanish. “I think that was the thing that her and I shared the most frustration about…I’ve had opportunities where people say, ‘Hey, we need you to direct something. It’s a Spanish-speaking [project].’ I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know Spanish.’… They don’t think, ‘Wow, what kind of ideas does this guy has?’ It’s just, ‘Does he speak Spanish? All right, well then we don’t need him.’… I think the more Latinos are considered American and English, and we’re interviewed for our skills and not our culture, I think that’s how we can get there.”
Ramon’s belief that filmmaking and art should always be personal and collaborative reflects in the way the story’s told. The story shows how many creatives are forced to be entrepreneurial and multidisciplinary to create their own opportunities including content creation. It’s become a large part of being able to put someone’s work out there and also forces one to have a team to make content.
His trust and reliance on his team really came in the actual shooting of the film which was done in five days. He was able to utilize his skills from BET when he only got ten minutes to make a video with someone to shoot seven scenes a day that were mostly improvised. He trusted his team to get what they needed fast and move on. “If I had more days, I would have shot more off script, 100%. But I knew that I didn’t have that much time. So when you shoot improv, you’re leaning more into editing where you have to rewrite a lot of stuff in post-production. When you are shooting five days, you know, normally you’re shooting, two, maybe three scenes in a regular budgeted film. No, I was shooting six to seven scenes per day, and they were improv… And I’m like, OK, you have three takes. This is the beginning. This is the middle. This is the end. We’re going to shoot it all. And in those three scenes, we’re going to combine what works out of those three scenes to then create this whole scene.”
The process of making the film ended up reflecting a lot of what the film’s messages of the importance of community and persistence it takes to make your passion your profession. Like Sam’s journey in the film, it required a lot of persistence from a community getting their stories heard.
Belton DeLaine-Facey
Belton is a passionate screenwriter, film director, and stand-up comedian. As well as research skills from his time earning a biology degree, he has developed a strong ability to mix satire and wit with storytelling. He makes short films as well as writes feature-length & pilot scripts, and performs stand-up comedy. Recently, his short film, America’s Dating Game, screened at the Oregon Short Film Festival and the Austin Comedy Film Festival. You can also check out his podcast, Film vs. Movie, which he hosts and produces with Chris Shurr. He’s currently developing a narrative podcast series, The Near Disaster.
About Winter Film Awards
New York City’s 12th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival runs February 21-25 2024 in New York City and includes 82 outstanding films, a diverse mixture of animated films, documentaries, comedies, romances, dramas, horror films, music videos and web series of all lengths. Our five-day event is jam-packed with screenings and Q&A sessions at NYC’s LOOK Cinemas, six Education sessions/workshops and a variety of filmmaker networking events all coming to a glittering close on February 25 with our red-carpet gala Awards Ceremony.
Winter Film Awards is dedicated to showcasing the amazing diversity of voices in indie film and our 2024 lineup is 58% made by women and half by or about people of color. Filmmakers come from 23 countries and 41% of our films were made in the New York City area. 13 films were made by students and 26 are works from first-time filmmakers.
Winter Film Awards programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Promotional support provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.
Visit https://winterfilmawards.com/wfa2024/ for more information.
