Mineola filmmaker Nugent Cantileno said he can thank his grandfather for the new version of the Faust legend he tells in his short “Tilt of the Rose” that is set to debut at the Long Island International Film Festival later this month.
Cantileno, a graduate of Chaminade High School, said the idea for his first film was sparked by a painting his grandfather, whose name he bears.
The painting depicts the hand of God in one top corner and the hand of the devil in the other, with a rose tilting toward the hand of the deity, he said.
“That was what really inspired everything,” Cantileno said.
Cantileno’s 14-minute morality tale about a woman who makes a deal with the devil to achieve celebrity was also inspired by the 1930s age of Hollywood and the double-edged nature of fame itself, he said. The film is shot in black and white in homage to what Cantileno considers the golden age of filmmaking.
“I’m a fan of movies of that era. When I think of Hollywood, that era is what I think of,” Cantileno said.
The idea of fame as something that bodes ill runs parallel with the tale of selling one’s soul in “Tilt of a Rose.”
“I always found the idea of fame very fascinating. That plays into the theme. The theme is fame,” Cantileno said. “You look at celebrities like Elvis Presley or more recently Whitney Houston and that was their downfall.”
“Tilt” marks two watersheds for Cantileno as his senior college thesis project and his entry into independent film production.
The lifelong Mineola developed his first creative impulses performing in stage productions at Chaminade. While in grade school at the Corpus Christi School, he also did some commercial work. After graduating high school in 2008, he majored in film at Long Island University Post campus.
“I enjoy storytelling and entertaining. I write things I want to watch,” CantiIeno said. “I enjoy creating things and watching them come to life.”
He also did a minor concentration in journalism in college and did three internships with Fox News in Manhattan through connections at Chaminade.
In the summer after his freshman year in 2009, he did research for two Fox documentaries about Apollo 11 and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Towers. After his sophomore year, he worked on “Redeye with Greg Gutfeld” on the Fox News Channel.
In his final internship following his junior year, he worked in Fox’s New York news bureau, helping reporters come up with questions for interviews with Ann Hathaway and other film stars.
Last January, he worked as a production assistant on “My Cross to Bear” a short independent film about domestic violence directed by Peter Bongiorno. In 2010, he was a production assistant on “Detachment,” a film starring Adrien Brody filmed in some Mineola locations by director Tony Kaye for Paper Street Films.
Cantileno recently formed an independent film company, The Majors Productions, with four film compatriots who helped him produce “Tilt.”
Their first effort was a promotional video of the reopening of the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport
As a freelancer for Maxim magazine, he recently had a story published about the five most disgusting videos on YouTube.
Cantileno has recently completed a script for another short film and is working on his second screenplay while hoping “Tilt of a Rose” will be screened at other film festivals he’s submitted it to.
He admits to being nervous about its debut in the upcoming Long Island film festival on July 21 at Bellmore Movies in Bellmore at 1:45 p.m.
He won’t reveal the ending, but he said there is another underlying theme in the film. A clip and a film trailer can be seen online at https://www.facebook.com/TiltofaRose
“Another underlying theme is that everyone is capable of redemption. The choices we make can determine where we end up,” Cantileno said.
