LUTZ, FL – Loft 181’s impact extends beyond its walls.

The boutique offers clothes to sex trafficking victims and foster children. Workers guide girls through their selection and help curate a wardrobe.

Loft 181 serves people free of charge but their supply comes from donations.


Tahliyah Ayla once shopped at Loft 181, but now she has returned as a volunteer. Ayla urged people to keep donating. “We sometimes are in situations where we get robbed and things like that and it’s just really nice to get things from people and to have things that were probably better than what we had before.”

The clothes shop got its name from the number of girls in foster care in 2006, its founding year. The boutique is an extension of One More Child.

Click here for more about Loft 181.

GIFF shorts spotlight

TAMPA – The Gasparilla International Film Fest returned for its 17th year. The opening screening of Cash Out broke attendance records for the event but short films are the heart of the festival.

Shorts screenings give students and independent filmmakers the opportunity to show their work to a theatre of viewers and connect with others in the industry. There’s no better billboard for an artist than their name on the big screen.


Blue Boy (dir. Tyler Riggs)
The short Blue Boy entered GIFF looking to turn festival buzz into a feature movie. The film made its first step towards that goal as the director left closing night with the Grand Jury Award for Narrative Short in hand.

Blue Boy follows bodybuilder Joey Rossi (Matthew Leone) – aka Joey Muscles – as he nears the end of his prime. Itching to turn his career around, the athlete turns to desperate measures.

The film employs shifts in camera quality, as well as real-life social and media, to inspect Rossi’s psyche. “I use it to show how he really lets his superego go wild as his alter-ego of Joey Muscles,” says Riggs. “Then when we come out of the subjective, into the objective, you know, he’s a little bit more self-critical.”

A Beast With No Name (dir. Aiyanah Duddey)
A Beast With No Name stood out among student shorts.

The piece weaves together claymation, paper animation, 2D animation, and home videos. The result: a touching, dazzling picture about confronting one’s inner child. Amidst the array of hues in Beast, lies a pitch-black animal.

“I wanted to write a film about a girl whose trauma manifests as this wolf and she’s breaking out of this metaphorical cage,” University of Tampa film student Duddey continues. “And what does it look like when you live in a world of color but your trauma is dragging you down in this black-and-white scope?”

Next, Blue Boy looks to continue its festival success at the Sarasota Film Festival on April 6 and the Atlanta Film Festival on April 27. Duddey graduates from UT soon and will pursue making her art professionally.

Credits
Anchors: Victoria Harris & Dawson Cordova
Producer: Victoria Harris
Reporters: Samantha Allen & Jimmy Rosilio
Social Media: Justin Michael
Technical Director: Joshua Skinner
Teleprompter: Ariana Angelo
Video Editors: Aviva Kram & Melissa Baldelomar
Audio: Abigail Papasodero
Cameras: Samantha Allen
Web Editor: Jimmy Rosilio
Graduate Assistant: McKenzie Muskett
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Stephanie Anderson