Queens Tribune

Sherry Gamlin has a crown of bright red hair. She holds court in her Sunnyside, Queens apartment, one of the organizing headquarters for the upcoming Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival on Sept. 6 and 7 that she produces with her friend Teresa Ward.

Sherry, 56, spends her days as an office manager in New York City, but spends her free time planning the film festival in Sunnyside, the quaint garden community on the 7-train in Southwest Queens where she has lived off-and-on for 33 years. Sporting a bright-yellow shirt with “Sunnyside” across the front, she shares how finding her way to Sunnyside and finding the perfect role in the movie business took some time. As a kid she had dreams of making it big as an actress, and has been an extra in films including Something About Mary and television classic, “Saturday Night Live.”

“I was in to acting from a very young age, but then like most actors, we realized it doesn’t pay the bills,” she said.

And while she was trying to find a way to pay the bills, she was also trying to find a place that felt like home.

“I’ve lived in L.A. and the Village, but I always come back to Sunnyside. I was brought up in a very multi-cultural neighborhood, so this is like how I grew up. I feel at home here because it’s like the Bronx, but a little bit nicer.”

One day in 2001, she was feeling right at home doing her laundry on Skillman Avenue when she saw a sign that read, “Do you want to be a filmmaker?” She called the sign’s creator Sinichi Murota, who had created the festival to bring different cultures together.

“It sounded good to me. I didn’t have the time or money to invest in a school program, this just seemed perfect,” She said.

Right in the Sunnyside Community Center, over the course of four short weeks, Sinichi taught her and a few friends, the nuts and bolts of movie making from interviewing, camera work and editing.

“We were not professionals and you should not try this at home,” she said.

Sherry continued to use her beloved neighborhood as the backdrop for several films that were shown at the first and much smaller Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival in 2001 on a bed-sheet anchored between two trees. Her first film, “Lines and Conversations” was about people waiting in line. She spoke to those in the never-ending line at the Sunnyside Post Office, who instead of complaining, reflected on the changing neighborhood.

One patient elderly neighbor said Sunnyside has “changed a great deal, there are so many different cultures now, it’s very nice. It has changed for the best I think.”

Movie making was exhilarating, she said. “I felt like I had 10 cups of espresso with sugar, it was such a high I can’t describe. I felt like if this is the experience I’m getting from doing this I have to do this more often.”

Which led her to make a few more, including “Bow Wows and Meows,” a series of interviews with people that Sherry met in Sunnyside while they were walking their pets. The film ends with a shot of Sherry’s black and white cat, Betty, who she happened to find as a stray in the Sunnyside Gardens Park.

But eventually, the festival’s original organizer and film instructor Sinichi moved back to Japan. The festival was on hiatus for two years until one of Sherry’s neighbors who worked at the Sunnyside Gardens Park asked if she would be interested in bringing the festival back for a fundraiser. The 2007 festival was the first time Sherry and her friend Teresa Ward spearheaded the entire production.

Now, in preparation for the 2008 festival, Sherry and her friend Teresa are busy screening more than 50 DVDs to select the winning films that will show, selling ad space in program fliers to help with funding and promoting the event. Coming a long way from the festival’s meager bed-sheet screening days, this year they are aiming for 25 to 30 films of various genres and cultures.

And many neighborhood friends are helping to make this possible: Local artist, Ciara Elend, is designing the posters, friend Susan Bande will cover web design and promotion, Sunnyside Gardens Park is donating their park for a screening and Murphy’s Bar on Skillman Avenue is sponsoring the event.

But even though the festival is getting bigger each year, Sherry has no plans to get too big.

“I don’t want it to become Tribeca,” she said. “I want it to keep it small-town, but known for quality, original films from independent filmmakers worldwide.

The festival will be running September 6 in Sunnyside Gardens Park and September 7 at the Sunnyside Community Center. Check www.sunnysideshorts.net.