Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival

13/12/2024

13/12/2024

10/12/2024

Congratulations to this year's Audience Choice Winners, "A Broken Flaw of Marriage" (feature) and "Unlikely Mermaid" (short)! Official event pictures coming very soon!

08/12/2024

If it's the Buffys, then TBUFF must be coming to a close but we've still got a few hours to go! Check out the nominees and winners ( https://tbuff.org/selections2024/awards2024.html ) and some of them are playing today so join us at NCG Citrus Park before the 11th annual Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival ends tonight!

05/12/2024

TODAY IS THE DAY! The 11th Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival finally kicks off TONIGHT! Head over to NCG Citrus Park Cinemas for a program that includes feature thriller “The Bombshell Butcher” and shorts “Unknown,” “Honey,” “Field of Screams” and “Know My Worth”! Opening Night Red carpet starts at 6PM and the show starts at 7PM, then after the show we head over to the Opening Night After Party for some free appetizers for VIP passholders! Then from Friday onward its wall-to-wall movies until Sunday – genres galore, something for everyone! Thanks to all the board members, volunteers, filmmakers, attendees and our title sponsor Patriot Auto Glass who have made this weekend possible and we look forward to seeing you... underground!

Opening Night Link: https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/.../672ced20a96917005799a693
Main Schedule: https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule
Official Selections: https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/films
Passes: https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/passes/buy
https://tbuff.org/
TBUFF’s 2024 title sponsor: https://www.patriotautoglassfl.com/
https://www.facebook.com/patriotautoglassfl/

05/12/2024

After several years of close calls, Anthony Caban won the Feature Audience Choice award last year with “The Junior Squad Strikes Again” and so far he’s in pretty good shape this year with “A Broken Flaw of Marriage” leading all feature advance sales (besides Opening Night, of course). He writes, produces, directs and stars in the twisted thriller about a marriage gone seriously and disturbingly wrong. The film plays this Friday night, 12/6 at 8 PM at Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival 2024, presented by Patriot Auto Glass.

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6c1

04/12/2024

Continuing on with the theme of TBUFF honorees making appearances on Tampa TV talk shows to promote our event, actor Paul Wilson (of "Conjuring 3" fame) dropped by WFLA's Daytime show today. Paul was present at the first TBUFF in 2014, giving out the very first Buffy ever (and arguably saving us that year from total financial ruin because, surprisingly, we did not know what we were doing), and now 10 years later he'll co-host the Buffy Awards ceremony on Saturday. Thanks, Paul, for all you've done for TBUFF!

https://www.wfla.com/daytime/films-with-small-budgets-but-big-hearts-honored-in-tbuff/

04/12/2024

We just highlighted "A New Year's Ride," and a few days ago one of its producers and Bouncy Boxer Media co-founder Chelsea Wolf appeared on ABC Action News' Tampa Bay's Morning Blend to promote the film's 12/7 TBUFF showing as well as the festival in general, as this is Chelsea's 10th year attending so she has plenty to say about us. Thanks for the shout-out, Chelsea!

https://www.abcactionnews.com/morning-blend/2024-tampa-bay-underground-film-festival

04/12/2024

In December 2020, right in the middle of the worst phase of the pandemic, TBUFF was mostly virtual like the rest of the world. One of our official selections was “A Christmas Ride” from TBUFF regular Stefanie Davis and her prodco Bouncy Boxer Media, which was about a rideshare driver named Georgia and her curious interactions with her fares and friends and family on the title holiday. The largely improvisational feature would go on to win a couple of acting Buffys and develop a following as a very different type of Christmas movie, which 4 years later has led to a sequel, “A New Year’s Ride,” featuring several of the original’s actors and a large ensemble of notable Central Florida talent as fares. Daryen Ratte returns as the lead and becomes the first performer in TBUFF history to be nominated for Buffys twice for playing the same character in 2 movies. Unlike with “A Christmas Ride,” its sequel will get the proper presentation it deserves, on the big screen in front of a full audience, as “A New Year’s Ride’s” world premiere is this Saturday, 12/7 at 5:40 PM at Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival 2024, presented by Patriot Auto Glass.

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6c9

04/12/2024

Despite only recently becoming a Florida resident, Stephen Hancock is definitely no stranger to TBUFF, having won the 2017 Best Florida Short Buffy with “Road to Nowhere” (which he dropped in from his then-home state of Missouri to shoot), the 2019 Best Sci-Fi Film Buffy for “Dollhouse” and the 2020 Best Short Film Buffy (among several others) for “Overlord.” He continues on the sci-fi action path blazed by those films with his most ambitious project yet, the epic mini-feature “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of the Zone,” which was co-directed and co-written by Evan Muir. It is very difficult to believe this is not some Hollywood franchise pic, except for the fact that is actually quite good, which most of those are not – the war effects rival those in “Saving Private Ryan,” the production design looks like it came out of an embedded journalist’s camera and the sci-fi effects are in the neighborhood of “Interstellar.” Speaking of which, this is an unusually intelligent and extremely well-acted action film, with a thought-provoking screenplay and performances that elicit real emotion. As a result, “S.T.A.L.K.E.R” leads all films with 11 Buffy nominations, which appears to tie fellow sci-fi epic “The Manual” for the most in TBUFF history; coincidentally, “The Manual” was “Road to Nowhere’s” direct competitor in 2017 and took several awards “Nowhere” likely otherwise would have won, particularly Best Sci-Fi Film. In fact, “The Manual” also owns the record for most wins with 6 – we find out in 4 days if that record holds. A few hours before that event, “S.T.A.L.K.E.R” plays on 12/7 in the 3 PM block named for it, at Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival 2024, presented by Patriot Auto Glass.

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/films/6726b830a8ca2300de7379cc

03/12/2024

We end our exploration of the short film blocks with a final four, which is ironic considering one of them is First Friday, the very first block of TBUFF 2024 at noon this Friday, 12/6; it is followed shortly by Golden State Shorts at 1:35 PM, which as you might have guessed, were produced in California (although there are many other Cali shorts and two features scattered throughout the festival). On Saturday night we go International at 10 PM before bringing it back home on Sunday at 2:45 PM with the Crimetime Block, among them the police procedural “Gravel,” a tale of street tragedy that makes its way onto stage in “Curtain Call,” an old man trying to fend off a home invasion with his “Walker” and the cleverly written “Just One Last Thing,” about a man who has hired a contract killer to end his own life but keeps coming up with… just one last thing. Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival 2024 has over 200 shorts which cater to almost every taste.

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6b5

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6b3

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6a5

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a69f

03/12/2024

The late shows on Friday night consist of a lot of mindbending material, with characters dealing with unexpected and often dangerous futures, strange creatures and strange behavior in the present , time loops and travel causing the future, present and past to blend together, their own untrustworthy minds, alternate realities, or in the cases of “Sorority Court” and “The Red Diamond Cut,” a slightly exaggerated current reality that seems unreal to many, and then there is whatever is happening in “Can You Hear the Sea?”, one of the most original concepts we’ve come across, and we’ve come across a lot in 11 years. We’ve got light saber duels in “Dark Legacy,” post-apocalyptic Mad Maxish life in “Mary and Julius” and a rather-near-future in which much of your life is determined by social life/social media formulas in “Score Pending.” Mindbending Shorts start at 9:45 and Friday Late Night starts at 9:55, both this Friday, 12/6 at Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival, presented by Patriot Auto Glass.

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6a3

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6b1

03/12/2024

You don’t come across too many high fantasy features at film festivals because it’s a difficult genre to successfully execute even with Hollywood money, much less “underground” money, but Maddalena Kingsley and her Southwest Florida production team Random Magic put together an impressive effort with “Psyche.” Rooted primarily in Ancient Greek mythology but set in its own universe with production design perhaps a little reminiscent of “Bridgerton” or a Disney fairy tale, it follows the story of Psyche (the goddess of the soul for which all things “psych” come from) as she is confronted by the jealous Aphrodite in what becomes a battle of immortal powers. “Psyche” plays on Sunday, 12/8 at 11:10 AM, at Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival 2024, presented by Patriot Auto Glass.

https://tbuff2024.eventive.org/schedule/672ced20a96917005799a6dd