First, Leonardo DiCaprio started driving a Prius, then M. Night Shyamalan wrote a movie about trees killing people, and now the green movement has finally invaded Miami moviemaking. The cinephiles that founded the Borscht Film Festival are pledging to go green when they start filming their shorts this winter, which should boost their already high cool quotient. It all started when Borscht co-founder Lucas Leyva recently dropped by the set of Tony Tango, an indie Miami comedy produced by Borscht alum Jonathan David Kane.
"They don't waste plastic on set, they help reduce carbon emissions by going local with food and people, and best of all, they have an awesome solar powered generator by Electron Solar Energy, a company based in Wynwood," says Leyva about Tony Tango production. "I was pretty inspired by it."
Kane, who participated in last year's Borscht Film Festival, is a vegan and environmentalist so he made sure the project adhered to green initiatives. (He was also a cameraman for At the Edge of the World, the film that inspired the show Whale Wars.) And that's saying something when you're already battling against the financial constraints of making an independent film. Tango continues to film in Miami and threatens to throw the city's fledging cinema scene into the national spotlight, that is if the trailers are any indication.
Just as importantly, the Tango production got the Borscht founder thinking they should do the same. Leyva says "When Borscht shoots its 6-12 shorts this winter, we are going to adopt this green initiative on all the films." That means they have to get their hands on that solar generator.
