The Florida Roundup - The Florida Roundup 'Film Fest'

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

This week on a special ‘Film Fest’ edition of The Florida Roundup, we spoke with three directors of three film documentaries related to the Sunshine State. First, we spoke with Rick Goldsmith, the director of “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink” (01:10). Then, we spoke about the documentary “River of Grass,” with its co-producer Ali Codina and director Sasha Wortzel (19:30). Plus, we were joined by Jamie Winterstern, the director of “Sanibel,” a documentary that explores sea-shelling around the island before and after Hurricane Ian (37:36).

Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at Everglades Foundation.org. Hello, this is Anne-Marie Tucker from Jacksonville, Florida. You are listening to The Florida Roundup. Here's Tom Hudson. Well, thank you very much, Anne-Marie, and welcome to the Florida Roundup Film Fest. Today we're featuring interviews with directors of three film documentaries that are related to Florida.

We will tour the Everglades with archival footage and sound from the mother of the Everglades, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. One of the things I was so struck by was how resonant what she was saying in these interviews, and also how unapologetic and fierce she was, but how relevant it was to us now. And then we'll get some sand between your toes as we go hunting, for seashells before and after a destructive hurricane. It's just nature. It's very therapeutic. Nature doesn't think, right? We think. And nature just is.

But first, a film about something Florida has not been immune to, the decline of local news, especially local newspapers. The documentary film, stripped for parts, American journalism on the brink, examines the trend of hedge funds buying newspapers over the past two decades and the broken business of local journalism. Rick Goldsmith is the producer and director of the film. Rick, thanks so much for joining us. A really important film and terrific storytelling.

What do you think attracted these alternative investors, these hedge funds, these private equity investors, to the newspaper industry way back when? Basically, their MO was distressed asset investing, meaning they go after distressed companies, distressed industries, distressed countries, sometimes. It's kind of a three-step process. for them. And so newspapers fit into that very well. It's a distressed company, let's say, or

industry, maybe in bankruptcy, maybe filing for bankruptcy. So they get it for a song. That's number one. Number two is they look for the bigger assets, which in the case of newspapers, are generally the downtown buildings, the newsrooms. They sell the building. And in a way, they may have, because it's a distressed property, the newspaper, the building might be worth more than the newspaper itself. So number two, they've made back a good part of their investment. And number three is they cut expenses. And what are the main expenses that they cut is they downsize the staff. Typically, they've reduced newsrooms soon after they get the property by 10, 20, and 30 percent, a newsroom of 100 down to 70.

And it makes a huge difference for them so they can make money, but it makes a huge difference for the community because they no longer have that beefy news organization that can do its job and tell the people what's going on in their community. Your film centers on the buyout of the Denver Post by this hedge fund named Alden Capital. That happened in 2010. It was among the first really big city papers that went to hedge fund.

Florida newspapers have experienced this. Private equity firm, Fortress Investments, renamed into Gatehouse. It owned the Palm Beach Post and the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville. And then it was bought by Gannett, the company behind USA Today, which is the big voice in Florida. 19 papers Gannett owns in the Sunshine State, Rick. McClatchie is owned by Chatham Asset Management, which owns three papers. including the Miami Herald, and then Alden is here in Florida with the Tribune Company, those two former properties, the two Sentinels, the Sun Sentinel in Broward County and the

Orlando Sentinel in Orlando. They must be making money. Otherwise, they wouldn't hold on to the assets at this point, right? Rick, I mean, journalism still has, I guess, a business model of some case, doesn't it? Well, I would say it doesn't really have a business model. The business model for a hedge fund owned newspapers still exists. But if you peel away the layers, what you find is they don't have a big enough staff to cover the neighborhood. The hedge fund owners have found a way to buy up these properties and saddle the newspaper entity with debt. So the hedge fund itself is making money, while the newspaper part of it is stretched by more debt than they had before they were taken over.

So there really isn't a sustaining business model that works. One of the characters in your film is a guy by the name of Larry Rickman, who's a longtime newspaper editor. He was with the Denver Post and then left and was part of one of those digital startups called the Colorado Sun. And he says, We cannot keep doing things the way we've been doing them with corporate. ownership of newspapers. We've got to find a new model. What's the purpose of a newspaper today in

2025, Rick? Well, the purpose of a newspaper should be, the purpose of any news organization should be to serve the public to, I mean, historically, newspapers were the one entity that has kind of united communities. And maybe it was a happy accident that there was a business behind that mission back in the 18th and 19th and 20th century. But is there still a business behind that mission of informing and tying a community together? From about the 1830s on forward, it worked because the money, the revenue, the chief revenue that came in, came in through advertising. So the business model was predicated on selling ads, whether it be classified ads or you know, the car dealership or the department store ads.

I had an early journalism professor. Cynic or not said the actual business was selling the audience to the advertisers. Exactly right. Exactly right. But it worked well enough so people didn't really question the contradictions of, well, how do you serve the advertisers and serve the public at the same time? There's sometimes a conflict. So who got shortchanged? Well, poor communities, communities of color, labor. You know, there wasn't

money to be made through the ads, so they didn't really have to serve those communities well. But it worked well enough to get a newspaper on every doorstep in every community. Beginning about 20 years ago, it ceased to work because of a lot of things that people know, the Internet, the younger generation, the reading habits changed and so forth. And those ad dollars really went away and went to the big tech companies instead like Facebook and Google. So that business model doesn't really work anymore. It helped then create the cycle perhaps we're seeing now with these so-called distressed assets of legacy newspapers and media organizations with then hedge funds and private equity investors moving in as you document in your documentary. There's an investigative reporter you feature, Julie Reynolds, who was kind of on the forefront of documenting this back in the early 2000s and mid-2000s.

She examined the investor takeover of newspapers. And she talks about what she told you as a deliberate destruction of local journalism. Is it deliberate? Do you think these hedge funds, these private equity investors are deliberately targeting these newspapers in order to destroy them? I don't think that I think the goal. of, I say this a lot, they have three goals. Money, money, and money. And that's about it. And what happens is, you know, are they deliberately destroying the newspapers or the news organizations for political means? In the case of all the global capital, not really. Yeah, I know what their political proclivities are. You know, the Randall Smith, who started it, contributed heavily to Donald Trump. Is a fellow resident of Palm Beach, I believe, too. Yeah, that's right. And Julie Reynolds' great investigations

really show that it is about the money. So I think when she says they're deliberately destroying your local newspaper, it's a byproduct that can't be avoided. In other words, their business model works because they can afford to destroy your local newspaper. Another journalist you highlight in your documentary is Penelope Abernathy, a former Wall Street Journal in New York Times journalist who has studied the hedge fund activity in papers. And she told you this. It was not just about the business of newspapers. It was about what was at stake for our democracy. if hedge funds and private equity groups manage to enforce their vision for the future of newspapers on everyone.

Rick, what do you think that vision is of newspapers that hedge fund owners and private equity owners may have? Well, I think the vision is it's a vehicle for them to make a lot of money. And that's the main difference between the media moguls of yesterday and the media moguls of today. yesterday they had two goals and one was to run a business to make some money and a lot of them got very wealthy but number two was serving the community and I think most newspaper moguls even in the past in some way shape or form did serve the community the hedge funds of today have only one goal and that's to make money and when you have that then you don't have the products being paid attention to. And the product here is news, opinion, watchdog journalism. That's the

product. And that falls by the wage side, willy-nilly, in the search for profits. The argument that many of us journalists make is its democracy at the heart of that. That is the keystone that holds all that together. And that's, I think, among the points that Penelope is trying to make here. Exactly right. And that's why this is such a crisis. If it was just a crisis of, you know, some hedge fund billionaires replacing other billionaires and running the newspapers in the same way, we wouldn't be alerted and we wouldn't be alarmed by so much. And I think that's why the journalists that you see in this film were so adamant about not just fighting this takeover, but informing the public about what was happening to their

daily newspaper. And they really were doing a service to all of us by not just standing up for themselves, but by getting the public to understand what is happening and getting them to understand the need to do something about it. As journalists, Rick, were trained skeptics. So let me ask you this question, given the stakes that those of us in journalism think are, at risk here. Is there something holier than thou if we're thinking that a newspaper or local journalism is somehow more than a business? No, I don't think it's holier than thou. I think that the people that go into journalism are very passionate about what they do and what the, you know, I say there's a journalism gene that floats around the atmosphere or the demographics, you

And maybe 5% of the people have it, and you probably have it. I'm guilty of it. And it's a gene that says, there's a lot of bullsh out there. There's a lot of, you know, corruption, abusive power. And I'm going to root it out. And a lot of these people got started on their high school paper or even their middle school paper. And I met some of them in my travels and they're amazing people. You know, I said that, you know, that guy.

is, you know, the next Carl Bernstein or whatever. So, yeah, I think people who go into journalism really feel like it's calling. And they need to be doing that. And do they necessarily think they have all the answers? No, but they're working honestly to root out abusive power, to be a watchdog on what city government is happening, what the corporation next door might be polluting the streams or the water supply, whatever. And it's up to them to, it's up to some of us. And they're the ones that go into it to be a counterweight to unrestricted capitalism, if you will. Liz Bowie is a reporter, was a reporter at the Baltimore Sun newspaper, another newspaper that's been targeted with these hedge funds and private equity takeovers. And you follow her activism in Baltimore

and the situation that has transpired there. And late in the film, you include this quote from Liz. I lost so much faith in, honestly, kind of in our country in that moment, that, like, we really don't care about local news. Do you think America and Americans still care about local news, local journalism about what's happening in their county commissions, their city councils, their school boards?

I think people do care. And, you know, Liz was a, you know, was a great interview. And I remember sitting there while I was interviewing her. And she said that to me. And it was like a punch in the gut.

Because I could feel her pain. Because she had gone through this fight to save the Baltimore Sun, which was part of the tribute company and part of that takeover. And when that failed, I could see how much that meant to her. And it speaks to the dedication of so many of the journalists. But I do think that people care. The question, the bigger question is, do enough of us care to do something about it, to devote time, to devote money, to devote what it takes, to organize with other people,

to save, to reinvent, to reimagine, to reinvigorate local journalism, and make it work for us. Because if we don't do that, we're in the midst of a crisis, and that crisis needs solutions. And there are, you know, in hundreds of communities, thousands of people working on just that goal to reinvigorate local journalism. But it needs all of us. It needs all hands on deck. And if we don't have it, I think we're, you know, we can see it on a national scale. We are in danger of being overrun and of losing our jobs. democracy, losing our representative democracy, losing something that is so precious to us and may fall in the hands of authoritarianism.

Rick, I was at a conference this past fall in Ira Glass, who is the creator and host of This American Life on public media, gave the keynote. And in regards to journalism, he said, we can insist on the reality of the world. That's what we can do as journalism. I think that's a very good quote. And I think it's what I'm finding is journalists are leading the charge of trying to figure out this crisis and trying to figure out what the next step is going to be in journalism. But it's going to take more, if it is only 5% of the people that have that gene, it's going to take more than that 5%. and the, you know, the number of jobs in journalism have decreased by more than 60% in the last two decades.

So, you know, we're at a crossroads. Nature or nurture, Rick, I don't know, but it was 11 years old and I got into the newspaper business on the distribution side as a paper boy for the new, for the Des Moines Register in Davenport, Iowa, putting the Sunday papers together on cold January mornings before dawn. I think it's a grand tradition. And, you know, there's a reason that that gets kind of that sort of thing, the paper boy on his bike, tossing the papers onto the doorsteps, kind of gets romanticized. Well, my dad drove me around because it was pretty cold. I'll be honest with you, but nonetheless. Yeah, well, but I think it speaks to a tradition in this country that goes deep.

and the newspapers probably have seen their day and it will be, you know, probably in another decade or so, just about no print newspapers. But it doesn't mean that the news organizations have to go away. The journalists of organizations have to go away. And they're being recreated in hundreds of towns and villages and outposts. in this country right now. Rick Goldsmith has been our guest. Rick, thanks so much for sharing your film and the conversation with us. Thanks a lot, Tom.

Speaking with Rick Goldsmith, the producer and director of Stripped for Parts, American Journalism on the Brink. It's streaming on the PBS Passport app. Still to come, a meditation in and about the Everglades. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Rondup from your Florida Public Radio Station.

Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at EvergladesFoundation.org. Hello, this is Kenneth Wright from Miami, Florida. You are listening to the Florida Roundup. Here's Tom Hudson. Great to hear from you, McKineth.

Thanks for your assistance. Next week, it's an encore of our winter reading special featuring journalist and author Carl Hyacin. I couldn't really write about any place else to write about Florida because I've never lived anywhere else. I don't care about any place as much as I like Florida. Hyacin has written about Florida for a half century as a journalist and novelist,

so how does he separate Florida from fiction in his novel these days? Also here from journalist Michael Grunwald next week. He's traveled the world investigating connections between what we eat and climate change. It's insane that in the free state of Florida, right, supposedly cares about competition and the free market, telling us what kind of meat we can eat. And then it's the long fight to restore voting rights for felons in Florida

with journalist and author Danny Rivera. There was a perception for a lot of people that this mostly impacts black Americans, which means mostly Democrats. That is wrong. That's all next week on our winter reading special here on the Florida Roundup. It is a Florida Roundup Film Fest here this week. We're hearing from directors of three documentaries related to the Sunshine State. Let us know some Florida films that you've been watching or that are in your queue.

You can email your recommendations to radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. A new documentary breathes some new life into decades-old words from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. She's the woman credited with champion the ecosystem that stretches across the bottom of the peninsula. The film is entitled River of Grass. That's the same title as Stoneman Douglas' seminal 1947 book about the Everglades. We spoke with the film's co-producer Ali Kodina and director Sasha Wartzel. The name of the film shares the name of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas' book, River of Grass,

and you use Sasha archival film of Marjorie when she was in her 90s in her. her home in Coconut Grove, which still is standing today, and you mix it in with a lot of her own words from that book from the late 1940s. What do you think that she has to say to new generations of Floridians about the Everglades? You know, initially I set out to make a film that would reimagine her text, her book, River of Grass, and put passages in conversation with portraits of people across the region and to sort of bring it up to the present day from 1947 and to bring that book into the future.

I had a dream over the course of making the film where Marjorie said, you know, what about me? I have things to say. People have forgotten me. It's great that you're working with my book, but what about me? So I went looking for her and I found this incredible archival footage that's in the film.

And one of the things I was so struck by was how resonant what she was saying in these interviews, and also how unapologetic and fierce she was, but how relevant it was to us now. And towards the end of the film, there's an interview where the journalist asks her, will the war ever be won? And she says, maybe not,

or not in the way we want it to be, but you have to keep fighting. And that became a really important message for me, me in the making of the film and a reminder that, you know, the struggle is very real. Allie, there's a clip of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in this archival film that's included in the film where she talks about in 1947 when River of Gras was published. She talks about how many more tens of thousands of people had moved to Florida compared to when she became a Floridian 40 or 50 years earlier.

I think there was that interest in Florida, and the everyday is the one thing they didn't know about. That was 70 years ago. Is that still true today, do you think? I think it's very true today. It's fascinating how growing up in Miami, I remember the first time I went to the Everglades was in second grade when we went on a field trip and we went on a Mikosukee Airboat Ride.

And I was blown away because I had grown up and I did grow up fishing and I think in Miami there are plenty of people who spent time out in the beach or they go out fishing or boating or diving and it's pretty incredible how disconnected that world is in most people's minds from this distant, menacing, bizarre place that is the Everglades and even still when I tell friends and family that I'm going camping with my kids, my kids have grown up in the swamp, are you sure?

What about the gators? And yes, and I think it's one of the beautiful opportunities of this film is to give, it's an invitation to connect and to fall in love with it. this place. I will share with both of you. There was a very short moment that I kind of laughed out loud in the film. And it's not a perhaps meant to be a humorous moment, but Marjorie is recounting her move to Florida, right? She came here escaping a bad marriage. And the film talks about how Marjorie Stoneman Douglas came to Miami, Miami, to escape a con man. Yes. Okay, thank you very much. Yes.

Yeah. Did that occur as you were putting that into the film? This idea of the reputation of Miami. And here's Marjorie in the early part of the 20th century, excusing herself to South Florida to try to escape a scoundrel. It's funny. I don't know that I'd quite completely made that connection, but definitely in making the film, you know,

I was thinking a lot about the sort of stereotypes of Florida. Florida's either. the butt of the joke or people are saying things like, forget that place, let it fall into the ocean. And one of the reasons that I felt so moved to make this film River of Grass is because I know that there's very real difficulties and political struggles and violences of Florida. And there's also this abundance and beauty and some of the most incredible ecosystems that you cannot find anywhere in the world and communities as well. And I wanted to create a film that really portrayed a more nuanced and complex vision in cinema of the state of Florida.

There's a moment early in the film where you have a park ranger and Everglades Park Ranger talking to a tour, essentially, before they head out into the sawgrass. Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the scenery screams at you, when in the Everglades, it whispers. More you know about the place, the louder the whispers come. you know for those who have visited the Everglades there are no majestic mountains there there's no expansive valleys some may argue there's no vibrant vista I would argue against that by the way but you have to look for it what is the draw for each of you Sasha you first what's the draw of the Everglades well first of all it is our drinking water so it's an essential

practical place and I think that also So there's a feeling when I'm there, a sort of peace, a feeling of a place of no judgment. Allie, how about for you? What's the draw of the Everglades? The draw for me is not too different from what it is for Sasha. It truly is a place of healing. But I do feel that it's a place that is very raw and there's such a direct connection to nature itself. And I find that in connecting with nature, I feel more connected to myself.

and I feel that more deeply when I'm out in the Everglades and in those waters and looking for all those subtleties, as you said, because it's not screaming at you. No. And I think in quieting down in that way, you're not only connecting with all of these kind of invisible forces, but also with yourself. Betty Osceola, who is a member of the Mekisuke tribe in the Everglades, she really gives personification to water. Water is sad because it's being made out as if she's the enemy

and she's just a victim and she's being victimized by her relations around her. That's us. And then, Sasha, when you visit Lake Okeechobee for the first time and see the waters for the first time, even though you grew up, not far from Lake Okeechobee, but the first time you actually saw it in real life, You call it the liquid heart of Florida.

Almost every Floridian is touched by this lake's waters in their lifetime. She is the liquid heart of Florida, and her waters once flowed freely. This personification of water that has really shaped in a literal and figurative sense, Florida. Lake Okeechobee, which, you know, is an incredibly important part of our ecosystem and the touches almost every Floridian in their lifetime, that lake to me was often described as this very dirty, toxic place, that it was the cause of the fish kills and the, you know, the declining water quality. And then taking that walk with Betty and seeing this lake that is very much a part of me, I've been receiving this water, drinking this water, and realizing that the lake, she is

this vibrant, alive place. We sat on the levee and watched manatee's surface in the water. Otters crossed our paths, bald eagles flew over, and I was struck by how radically different this place felt from how the lake had been represented to me growing up. And I do think that something that I really worked towards in the film was to think about the landscape in the water as a character, a main character, and to film and capture land in the environment with the same sort of

respect and dignity I would any human participant. Balance that against another section of the film when you tag along with some python hunters, right? This awful invasive reptile that has decimated the small mammal population. We've been stressing the environment for way too long, and it's showing it now. These pythons, they're kind of the last straw. And then in the film you cut to a restaurant, an interior shot with, I think it's wallpaper that has essentially paintings of deer and otters and rabbits and skunks, all these mammals that have all but disappeared from the true Everglades because of the python. A real contrast.

Yeah, that mural, it's actually a really beautiful 360-degree mural that was painted in the forest. around the same time that Douglas' book is published. And it's in a hotel that was built by Big Sugar, by the sugar industry. And it's just a beautiful, beautiful mural, and it's sort of haunting because it's become more like a memorial to a whole community of plants and animals and particularly mammals that are no longer there. There's another section of the film that I think the viewer may see with a different lens today than if they saw your film even a few months ago.

And this is the part regarding the jet port, which was the airport that was almost built in the Miami-Dade and Collier counties. This is known as the Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport. It's also been known or renamed Alligator Alcatraz, of course, with the immigration enforcement strategy from the Trump administration and the DeSantis administration. It was a fight with the Miccosukees back then

in the late 60s when it was proposed, And, Allie, it was a Republican who canceled the jet port. The White House said today that Florida will not build a jet port near the Everglades, but will receive federal assistance in finding a new site. President Nixon called it an outstanding victory for conservation. It was President Nixon, Richard Nixon, that canceled that jet port. How do you think about the inclusion of the jetport story in the Everglades today here in late 2025, given what has happened just in the past few months with that facility?

On the one hand, there's been some extraordinary, at least for me personally, I have found an extraordinary power and inspiration and watching a very, very similar coalition of people gather as they did in the 70s. You have fishermen, you have hunters, you have the Gladesmen who've lived there for generations, and that's also their home. Of course, the Mekisukee and Native communities. You also have Friends of the Everglades, which was founded by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. So Marjorie in the 70s, this fearless, irreverent, amazing woman. But she was unstoppable. And it's been beautiful also watching that, how out in these different prayer gatherings and protests and any of the pushback that there's been with Alligator Alcatraz, people are relying on Marjorie's voice.

You see quotes of hers and the signs. Sasha, I'm wondering what are your thoughts about? that Jetport chapter in the Everglades today and how the audiences will see that, which is much different than perhaps what you intended as the director of this film when you were including it prior to Alligator Alcatraz. Maybe the intention hasn't changed,

but how it'll land absolutely will. I think that it is very important for our present day movements to protect the environment or any, you know, organizing around any and justice in the world to look at what's come before and what's happened in the past as a sort of roadmap to use for now. And I think that, yeah, we never could have predicted when we made this film how relevant it would be. But we do highlight this eerily parallel moment where

the Mikasuki tribe, Marjorie Stone and Douglas, people from all walks of life, unlikely coalitions came together and they shut down that project. This film begins. almost begins with the hurricane, mentioning a storm, and it kind of ends with Betty Osceola talking about the real value of hurricanes, particularly when it comes to the waters of the Everglades, something that many Floridians may have a difficult time kind of matching with the destructive nature of hurricanes

that we've seen just in recent years, and you've experienced firsthand in many, many storms growing up in Southwest Florida. When a hurricane comes through, people see it as a destroyer of the environment. The hurricane cleans the landscape. It cleans the water. And after a hurricane area, it would look like it's been swept.

It's nature's way of cleaning a house. Yes, it was a real reframing for me. began this film in the wake of Hurricane Irma. And towards the end of making him this film, Hurricane Ian really directly hit and devastated my home community. And it's been really helpful to move from a place of sort of blaming these storms and fearing them and feeling grief about them to realize that they're necessary. These are natural forces that are needed in order to clean our water, to renewal the growth cycle. They're part of our natural cycles of the wet and dry. And it's us that have made these storms worse. And so how do we move with the water? How do we move

with the weather in the future? Sasha, Allie, thank you so much for sharing your film with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Sasha Wartzel is the director of the documentary film River of Grass Alexandra Codina is the co-producer. Now, what's in your cue? We want to know some Florida-focused films or some of your favorite documentaries about the Sunshine State. Send us your recommendations by emailing radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org.

Still to come, see shelling and a big storm on Sanable Island. Shells are resilient creatures. That's the whole idea behind is shell, and we ourselves are very resilient. We tend to not give ourselves enough credit. And I think in times, like a hurricane like Ian, and the cost that it did to the islands and the community, they're still there, and they're rebuilding. I'm Tom Hudson, and you're listening to the Florida Ronda from your Florida Public Radio Station. Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset

that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at EvergladesFoundation.org. Hello, this is Nancy Hoffman from Palm Coast, Florida. You are listening to the Florida Roundup. Here's Tom Hudson. Nancy, thanks so much for your help this week. Great to have you along. It is our Florida Roundup Film Fest program,

conversations with three Florida filmmakers and what could be more Florida than a film about sea shelling. Jamie Winterstern started sea shelling as a tourist before he moved to the Sunshine State. He was out on the beaches in and around Sanibel weeks before a big hurricane. He was filming a documentary not about a storm

but about sea shelling and the people who hunt and collect shells as a pastime and as a livelihood, but then Hurricane Ian hit. Jamie's film is entitled Sanibel. Jamie thanks so much and congratulations on this film. Why decide to make a documentary about seashells? I used to collect shells with my mom when I was a child. Being from Montreal, we were snowbirds and we'd come down to Florida and I would walk the beaches with her. She unfortunately passed early in life to early onset

Alzheimer's and it was around that time that I discovered the west coast of Florida, which shelling is the capital of the world. And it made me feel close to her to walk the beaches and and pick up shells. And Sanibel was such an epicenter for this sort of thing. Well, I'm sorry for your loss so many years ago. What does a shell represent to you as someone who has collected them through the years in Southwest Florida? You know, it's just nature. It's very therapeutic. Nature doesn't think, right? We think. And nature just is. And I find that when we're close to nature, it's a very spiritual experience. So for me, it was very much, you know, being able to be close with nature and to stop thinking. There's a reverence early in the film

that is conveyed clearly through the visuals and especially the music that you have selected to use underneath these gorgeous visuals of beaches and beaches of shells in Southwest Florida. There's a reverence, there's the undertone of faith, and you talked about this religious experience. Where do you think that comes from for this inanimate object? When I lost my mom, I had a lot of questions about mortality, and it made me feel more at peace with the world. The documentary was never supposed to be about a hurricane. That just happened. And the irony of that is, as much pain as the hurricane caused, we end up finding our way back to the same beaches.

There is that before and after in the documentary, before Hurricane and then, of course, after Hurricane and the utter natural devastation that the storm brought, and of course, all the personal devastation that it brought to the characters that you highlight. One of those characters doesn't loom large in your documentary, but is a collector by the name of Nancy Black.

Welcome to my shell collection. For one reason or another, Nancy's story kind of resonated with me of someone who just loves shells for their own purpose. She's not in the business of making jewelry or selling them, polishing them up at the local corner store. Window traps.

Little baby, window traps. You know, you see them in a jar or anything. They're all exactly the same. But when you line them up side by side, each one is a little bit different, just like people. And then you catch up with her after Hurricane Ian. I had over eight feet of water in my lower level. And her collection of countless thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of shells, are all gone, wiped out.

Every single shell is gone. I mean, there were thousands and thousands of shells. Sad? Shells are resilient creatures. That's the whole idea behind a shell, and we ourselves are very resilient. tend to not give ourselves enough credit. And I think in times like a hurricane like Ian and the cost that it did to the islands and the community, they're still there and they're rebuilding. And that's just symbolic of what we are as creatures. We will keep coming back to the same

beaches and we're going to rebuild the community. And there's something very powerful and profound about that. There's the cruel irony of a hurricane that your film points out for anybody who's been through a hurricane, you know that the days after the hurricane, while personally can be devastating, the weather can be terrific because all that bad weather has blown out. Similar for shelling after a hurricane, you have several of the tour captains that do these private tours for shellers, note that they need to be back on the water for economic reasons quickly after a storm like Ian, but also that because of the natural effect of a storm like that hitting Sanneville Island and Captiva, the shelling is second to none.

Hurricanes are obviously devastating for the whole entire area that it gets hit, but as far as shelling, shilling after hurricanes is the best. It possibly can be everything. You know, you've had 40, 50 foot waves all in the Gulf of Mexico and that undulation is pushing everything up on the beach. So all the deep water, very rare shells are showing up in droves. That's the catch 22 right and and there is like question of morality it's a difficult situation because you know we have to provide for our families and in many instances a lot of these people this is their primary source of income you know and then you have megan and tyler where there was such a crisis of identity for megan who didn't even know if she wanted to shell after something like

that where she didn't even find the enjoyment of you know the beaches were plentiful with the very thing that she idolized and loved her pretty much her whole life, and she just didn't feel like picking up shells. Megan is Megan Blackman-Cleafut, who owns a store with her mother-in-law and her soon-to-be husband at Marco Island. Earlier in the film, she introduced me to a whole new vocabulary when it comes to the world of shelling here, Jamie. She talked about, let me see here, spots and dots when it comes to shells, spots and dots. She talked, I think it was about herself, describing herself as a shellbrity, a shellbrity. Do I have that right? A shell, like a celebrity, but a shellbrity. Celebrity, celebrity, that's it, a celebrity. And then she talked

about shelling and sipping, shelling and sipping, which I imagine is staying hydrated with an adult beverage while you are looking for shells. Absolutely. So there's this whole kind of microculture of shelling. That's what the story kind of was becoming when we started before Ian was even a thought. It was just a really specific culture of people that took, you know, this very seriously. And they came up with their own lingo and words. You touch upon really a cutthroat nature of these shell tours getting out more into, you know, the 10,000 island area, south of Marco Island and south of Captiva and Sanibel. And also the role of social media in spreading the popularity of shelling and particularly spreading the popularity of some of these really unspoiled places in southwest Florida. There's certainly the economics of trying to provide for a living, but also that balance, that conservation balance of shellers to try to keep these areas as pristine as possible to continue to enjoy them at the same time.

How do they find that balance? It's difficult. I mean, social media is just affected, not just shelling, but kind of everything in life, bringing the masses into a very niche culture. And there are impacts to, you know, over shelling. It's kind of how, I guess, culture is evolving as the world gets smaller with our small, you know, cell phones and our smartphones. I have to tell you, I was astounded by some of the economics of shelling that you

have captured in this film and the prices of some of these. shells that they fetch on the retail market. Some of them just a couple dollars. But some of them also several hundred dollars for a single shell that someone picked up on the beach. Thousands of dollars. Fair enough, Jamie. Thousands of dollars. Our banded tulip would be a dollar 50. Alphabet cone species 10 to 30 dollars or lightning lumps a dollar all the way to 50 dollars depending on its size. To me, I wouldn't sell this for probably less than $800. And I suppose that's the hunt, right? the thrill of the hunt for the shelling community. You know, the signature shell is the genonia, of course. I mean, it's not the most pricey one. I think the golden band cone is, which,

which ranges up north of $1,000. But the genonia was kind of the thing, especially in Sanibel, if you found a genonia, they'd write you up in the paper. Describe one of those. What does that look like for folks? Spots and dots are essentially genonias. That's the pattern that you find on the surface. Also alphabet cones. Alphabet cones for what we would call a palm which is like the size of your, the palm of your hand. Of your palm, yep. Those range depending on the pattern between $30 and $50. And, you know, you'll find those.

You know, and then you have the smaller ones as well. When you shell, you find the shell and it's like you're getting that like dopamine hit every 20 to 30 seconds. There's an analog or a corollary, I suppose almost with social media and the infinite scroll just continuing to scroll to get that dopamine hit, that dopamine hit, looking for the shell to find that one, to find that one, to find that one. I mean, that's why social media is taken to sea shilling, because it's, yeah, it's exactly right. You know, you're kind of, what do you call it?

It's like you're on the couch and you're surfing. You're almost shelling from your cell phone, right? But therapy is the same. You're still not thinking about anything but the five feet, ten feet that's in front of your nose. And that's what it's all about. And that's what I want to ask you about, Jamie. There's a final comment late in the film, the final seconds. and it's a rhetorical question asked by one of your characters.

What do I think about when I show? I don't know what I think about. I just think about I'm glad to be outside on the beach in the fresh air, picking up things I love, looking at them. Is there something wrong with this shell? Did it have a high life? Did it reproduce? What happened to it?

Why is it here? What do you think about when you're shelling? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that is utter peace. And that is what this movie is ultimately about. It's about finding peace. Jamie, thanks so much for sharing it with us. Much appreciated.

Thank you. That's Jamie Winterstern. He's the director of the documentary film, Sanibel. It's available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. And that is our program for it today. It is produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WUSF in Tampa by Bridget O'Brien and Denise Royal. Wellerin's Vice President of Radio is Peter Merritt. The program's technical director is M.J. Smith, engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson,

Ernest O.J. and Harvey Brassard. Our theme music is provided by Miami Jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at Aaron Leibos.com. Send us a note to let us know what Florida film you have been watching. Our email address is Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Thanks for emailing, listening, and above. of all, supporting public radio in your slice of Florida. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.

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