Q&A's

Nicole Potamousis’ film Patty recently screened at the Gasparilla International Film Festival and took home the Jury Award for Best Film at the FilmGate festival in Miami.

Tell me about Patty.

Patty is a six-minute documentary about one of my film professors at UTampa, Santiago Echeverry. He’s been such a great mentor to me — he cares so much about his students and he’s just so unapologetically himself. He mentioned once that he has a background in performance art, which I thought was so cool. When I was assigned to make a microdocumentary for a class, I wanted to do something important that I felt passionate about, so I reached out to him. He’s originally from Bogotá, Colombia, and he’s overcome so much while still being such a charismatic, larger-than-life person, so I was honored to tell his story. The film starts out as an interview with a gray background and muted colors, and then transitions into bright, vivid colors as he performs a dance number as his alter ego, Patty.

When did your love of film begin?

My older sister is a film critic and writer, and at an early age she introduced me to Golden Age Hollywood cinema like Singin’ in the Rain, and weird, experimental stuff like John Waters. I became obsessed with picking apart technological aspects of movies and learning behind-the-scenes trivia. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I realized I could do this myself.

How did you end up at UTampa?

I’m from Palm Harbor and wanted to stay nearby, but there aren’t a lot of hands-on film programs in Florida. Most programs are geared toward writing or talking about movies, which I love, but I really wanted to make them. When I learned that there was professional gear here that I could work with, that was a huge motivation for me.

Describe your collaboration process.

Finding the people I work well with makes it not even feel like work; it just feels like fun. On production for Patty, there was a student makeup artist, Tamara Pérez De Jesús ’25, whom Echeverry insisted on including. One of my favorite parts from Patty was shot spontaneously when Echeverry crashed

my cinematography class taught by Warren Cockerham. We hijacked the crane that was in the classroom and got some incredible shots with beautiful lighting.

Which filmmakers influence you?

Martin Scorsese is a big one. Not even just because of his work as a director, but his work as a film preservationist and historian is so impressive. Listening to him talk about the films that have shaped him is so inspiring. Also, one of the oldest female directors that I have always taken interest in is Agnés Varda. I think about being in her shoes in the ’50s and ’60s and how much she went through.

What do you think of the Tampa film scene?

My mind was blown the first time I went to the Tampa Theatre downtown. It was a double screening of two Buster Keaton silent movies with a live piano score. It’s so wonderful, yet so rare, to have accessibility to non-mainstream films and classic cinema that can bring a community together.