Local scene: Santello and his Arivaca festival are one of a kind

His company, Psychotropic Films, is pretty much a one-man show. To create his movies, he likes to combine existing media with his own camerawork and run everything through editing programs that often distort the colors into a barrage of fuzzy neons.

Santello, 49, is an engineering consultant who is building a solar-powered adobe studio for himself in Arivaca, a community south of Tucson near the international border. A Connecticut native, he goes back and forth between his wife's place in downtown Phoenix and the Arivaca property he bought in 1998.

He selects the movies for his film festival, now in its fourth year, by traveling to various Arizona film festivals and soliciting work from his contacts in the industry. He likes to limit his festival's films to work by Arizona artists or about themes relevant to Arizonans.

The 2009 festival showcases 15 films, including Santello's "The Outskirts of Infinity," all of which are shorts except for the feature-length mystery "Red 71," directed by Tucsonan Patrick Roddy. Santello expects 10 directors to attend the festival, which drew about 80 film lovers last year.

Why do you hold the festival in Arivaca?

"Arivaca is a rural community. We have a lot of arts and all sorts of stuff going on. There's never a dull moment. We have people who are into modern dance and theater, a lot of musical stuff and interest in films. Since I like films so much, I organized the festival to bring cutting-edge, under-the-radar work to the Arivaca community."

Why is this festival different from other festivals?

"I want to emphasize the real underground filmmaker, the filmmakers that are off the radar but are doing some good stuff.

"A lot of those bigger film festivals, they're too polished now. I want the Arivaca film festival to be unique. We have a potluck dinner. People from the town bring food.

"For the filmmaker, they get to have a personalized audience to basically screen their film. That's what makes the film festival unique. It's free. The budget for the whole thing is about $400. I'm not making money on this. I'm just doing it."

Do your films have plotlines?

"It's very much like dreams. We basically gather information during the day and then at night we somehow process that information. That's how the films are assembled. I don't consciously put in symbols in my film and expect people to figure it out. I just do it. It's more of a subconscious symbolism. It's not figuring out the film, it's about experiencing it.

"I don't like a lot of the abstract films, like Luis Buñuel. That stuff kind of irritates me. It's like they're trying to outsmart the audience in some kind of way."

Why do you edit your films so heavily?

"I do a lot of that because I want to take the viewer to a different place. People come out of (a regular) film saying, 'Oh I didn't like the actor's hairstyle, or they didn't do their lines right.' The characters and the plot are just distractions. I strip away the characters and the plot and look at the raw emotion behind the story."

What's your next film going to be about?

"It's going to be a feature-length film on the Apollo moon landings. It'll use all NASA films. In 'Echoes of Apollo,' I'm not doing any colorization or special effects. In the Apollo footage, there are a lot of artistic elements. Humans leaving the comfort of Mother Earth. They had to create an artificial womb for someone to go to the moon on. They're leaving nature and allowing machines to take over things that provide us air, provide us water. It's a very fragile thing where we're headed."

Given the name of your company, are your films better on drugs?

"People can say that. What I mean by that is: I looked up the world 'psychotropic' in the dictionary. It's a drug or agent that affects or alters the mind or psyche. Let's make believe the film is the agent. Films that alter the mind. Films that change the way you perceive looking at films. Or alter your perception of how you view films."

So your films are the drug.

"Exactly."

If you go

• What: 2009 Arivaca Independent Filmmakers Exhibition.

• When: Noon to 5 p.m. and 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday with a potluck in between.

• Where: Arivaca Community Center, 16012 Universal Ranch Road in Arivaca.

• Admission: Free.

• Online: arivacafilmexpo2009. blogspot.com