This is the latest in an ongoing series called “Around Fresnoland” where we’ll profile people fueling our neighborhoods and communities with heart, grit and creativity. Know a person with an interesting backstory? Send them our way to tips@fresnoland.org.
Two explorers on a treasure hunt – one with a fedora and a whip – swing from a rope over unseen dangers below.
You might already be picturing a South American cave as the setting of their jump. But it’s actually the hallway of a Fresno apartment.
If you’re thinking of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” you’re technically not wrong. But this is the Fresno-made, “sweded” version.
The just-under-four-minute video, recreating the iconic opening sequence of the 1981 Stephen Spielberg film (but with low-budget props, like a jump rope with one handle trimmed off in place of Indiana Jones’ signature whip), was Roque Rodriguez’s first sweded film.
You can still find it on YouTube – “unfortunately,” Rodriguez says.
What he didn’t know then was that the almost 17-year-old clip was the humble beginning of a now nationally celebrated, Guillermo del Toro-endorsed Fresno tradition known as Swede Fest.
“We just started in this shitty little gallery here,” he said, “with, you know, a giant cardboard rock that I made out of stuff that I found in the trash bin.”
Rodriguez and his friend Bryan Harley started the festival in 2008 and screened the handful of sweded submissions to a small audience of a few dozen people at a small gallery downtown.
This month, Swede Fest celebrated its twenty-fifth gathering – this time, with volunteer teachers from Fresno Unified’s video production classes helping run the show and Rodriguez and Harley in an advisory capacity.
The festival is one of Rodriguez’s ongoing legacies for Fresno movie lovers and filmmakers like himself.
Now, he’s at work on his next one.
That project is Cen Cal Cinema, a series of free, outdoor movie screenings around the city thanks to Measure P funding – or what Rodriguez calls a “mobile movie theater,” inspired by the likes of Solar Cinema in Arizona and the Alamo Drafthouse’s Rolling Roadshow.
Each Cen Cal screening has a location curated to match the themes of the movie. The first one in January, a screening of the “Weird Al” Yankovic-starring comedy “UHF,” screened outside CMAC downtown due to the film’s broadcasting-related plotline. It was accompanied by a lookalike contest that crowned Fresno’s weirdest Al.
The next Cen Cal screening is “all about family” – i.e., it’s a showing of “The Fast and the Furious” at Calwa Park this Friday. Rodriguez chose the park because in 2001, when the film came out, that was “where we went street-racing,” he said.
Rodriguez is also in talks with the Fresno chapter of the Sports Car Club of America to have a few cars on display during the screening.
Rodriguez’s dream is to bring this project beyond just city limits someday – and to rural communities, like the one where he grew up.
“The idea for Cen Cal Cinema is: Why don’t we build a mobile movie theater, to go to small towns around the Central Valley that don’t have movie theaters, and give them an opportunity to get off of work … go watch a movie,” he said, “and then be home in like 10 minutes.
“We bring that experience to them.”
From KMPH’s movie lineup to ‘El Mariachi’
Rodriguez was raised in the small agricultural community of Firebaugh in northwestern Fresno County. It didn’t have a movie theater during his upbringing (and still doesn’t).
Every once in a while, his parents would “throw the kids in the car” and make the 45-minute drive to Fresno to watch something in theaters. But that was a rare occasion due to work schedules.
Despite that, Rodriguez made his way to movies – initially, through PG versions that aired on KMPH and video rentals.
The first movie that gave him the itch to try out filmmaking himself was Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi.” Not only was it well-done, but what stood out to Rodriguez was that the filmmakers did all that with just over a $7,000 budget.
For college, Rodriguez moved where many aspiring filmmakers move: Los Angeles. But he wasn’t there to make films. He studied graphic design at Brooks College, which is now his day job.
After that, he came back to Fresno, where his filmmaking really took off – a decision some of his LA friends tease him about.
Sure, doing “weird art stuff” in Fresno is scary, just like anywhere else, he said.
“But,” he added, “I guarantee you it’s scarier to do this kind of shit in LA or San Francisco, just because of the egos.
“That’s the thing about Fresno. There’s egos here, too, but at least you can be in your own corner doing some weird stuff and you can build your audience that way.”
Swede Fest takes off
Fast forward to 2015: the year “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” comes out.
This was seven years into Fresno’s Swede Fest, which draws its name from a term coined in Michel Gondry’s 2008 film “Be Kind Rewind,” in which low-budget remakes are called “swedes.”
This was also after Rodriguez and his filmmaking friends started sweding not just movie scenes but trailers. Their popular swede of del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” movie trailer is what earned them public praises from the director himself. Their sweded trailers garnered attention from other Hollywood giants like Jon Favreau, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson.
So naturally, Rodriguez and his friends did what they did best, and sweded the Star Wars trailer.
That particular remake landed them on a segment on “Good Morning America,” where “Force Awakens” stars Daisy Ridley and John Boyega met with Rodriguez and the other stars of the swede, praising their rendition.
“We introduced the sweded versions of them to the real versions of them,” he said, “on live TV.”
With these high-profile boosts, Swede Fest blew up even more, Rodriguez said. They got coverage on ABC News, New York Magazine and NPR Morning Edition.
They also started getting more and more submissions from out of town – even out of the country.
This past year, entries came in from as far as Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom, to name a few.
‘Swede Fest Jr.’
In one of the most satisfying developments for Rodriguez through the years, they’ve also started gaining more and more Swede Fest entries from high schoolers.
“The ultimate goal with Swede Fest was to grow the filmmaking community,” he said.
“We want people to go make original stuff,” he added, “but we need to give them a stepping stone.”
Rodriguez loves hearing stories from first-time filmmakers that participated in Swede Fest – or people who cast their family in their productions, and feel like it brought them closer together.
Now, video production teachers from local high schools have actually taken on a greater role in helping run Swede Fest, while Rodriguez and Harley have advised.
The high school teacher volunteers have also introduced new elements to the festival, including having a “Swede Fest Jr.” that’s all high school submissions. At this year’s festival, there were also awards for the first time.
“They’re making it their own,” Rodriguez said.
A bright future for film-lovers in Fresno
Rodriguez has a lot of hopes for Fresno and the region’s movie scene.
One dream is to bring Cen Cal Cinema to smaller cities like Firebaugh. Another is to see an independent theater open someday, focused solely on showing films rather than a mix of movies and live shows.
But there are already a lot of good options for movie fans in Fresno, he added.
“Right now is the best time it’s ever been to be a movie-lover in Fresno,” he said. “We have really good theaters.”
His personal favorite is the Regal Manchester for its “sublime” seats – though Maya Cinemas might have the best audio, he added.
He’s also been happy to see more and more screenings at the Tower Theatre thanks to new promoter Numbskull Shows.
“LA and San Francisco – we’re always going to be living in their shadow,” he said. “But maybe if we get enough people to do some cool shit here, then, you know, maybe we can make our own kind of market.
“Fresno is coming up. I feel like there’s a lot of creative people doing stuff, and that’s kind of been the motto: Do cool shit.”
