By Carolina del Busto
Don’t Miss These Homegrown Documentaries at the 2024 Miami Film Festival
The Miami Film Festival documentaries spotlighting the Magic City prove there is nothing wilder than the truth.
There are likely more crazy, wild, unique, and wholly entertaining stories about Miami than there are grains of sand on South Beach. It’s a true delight when these accounts are encapsulated in film, particularly documentaries since there’s nothing wilder than the truth.
As part of the 41st annual Miami Film Festival, a bevy of locally made and locally inspired films will be screening. Perhaps the most anticipated documentary is one about the story of pinup-model-turned-photographer Bunny Yeager. Naked Ambition, the second collaboration between Kareem Tabsch and Dennis Scholl, premieres on Wednesday, April 10.
Whereas Tabsch and Scholl are talents in their own right, they’ve proved to be a winning combination.
“We love being 305 filmmakers,” Scholl tells New Times over Zoom alongside his filmmaking partner. “There’s a plethora of stories. We’re never without a story, and we love our community.”
Although the film received its world premiere at Doc NYC in 2023, Scholl had worked on the idea for the documentary about Yeager for more than a decade. He wanted to tell the story of this oft-overlooked, highly influential photographer who left such a lasting impression on pop culture.
He first approached Yeager in 2012, who brushed off his idea. Two years later, the former Oolite Arts president secured an interview with the then 85-year-old woman herself. On the day of the long-awaited filmed interview, Yeager fell ill and was admitted into the hospital — she never left.
“I was crushed,” Scholl says.
He put the idea on the back burner for nearly seven years. However, following the success of Tabsch and Scholl’s first documentary, The Last Resort, the pair wanted another reason to make a movie together. Scholl dusted off the old Yeager boxes, and they got to work.
Yeager was born in Pittsburgh and moved to Miami in her teens. Pretty soon, she began modeling, and it wasn’t long after that she picked up the camera and turned the lens onto herself and other models. In the 1950s, a time when women had a whole lot less influence than they do now, Yeager emerged as an inadvertent trailblazer.
Scholl jokes that through her pioneering work with the self-portrait, she practically invented the selfie.
So, who exactly was Yeager?
“I went into the film thinking that she was a feminist icon and that she would have thought she was a feminist icon because she deserves to be considered as such,” Scholl explains. “And I came out of it understanding how reluctant she was to think of herself that way.”
Leaning closer to the camera, Tabsch builds on Scholl’s observation, adding, “I didn’t really realize how much of a hustler she was. She was always striving for more. The film is called Naked Ambition for a couple of reasons, but she was ambitious, and she was really smart. She understood that while what she was doing was an art, it also had a commercial value.”
Miami is no stranger to hustle culture or people like Yeager.
