Film Info
Square Grouper

Film Information

Exhibition Title	Square Grouper
Original Title	Square Grouper
English Title	Square Grouper
Director	Billy Corben
Country
Year	2011
Format	HD
Colour	Color
Duration	100'

Production:

Fotografía / Cinematography: Randy Valdes, Matt Staker
Edición / Editing: Jorge Díaz
Producción / Producer: Alfred Spellman, Billy Corben, Lindsey Snell
Compañía Productora / Production Company: Rakontur

dates & times ticket

tickets

Synopsis

While the infamous cocaine cowboys were disfiguring Miami and making sensationalist headlines, marihuana kept flowing to the US on the same intense pace, but more peacefully now. In 1979, the Customs Office reported that 87% of the ganja confiscated in North America had been found in Southern Florida, since its five thousand miles coastline and river channels turned it into a paradise for smugglers who handled things much more quietly and almost without violence, as opposed to Griselda Blanco and her partners in the Colombian cartels. And that’s the tone –relaxed and unworried, i.e. stoned– Corben chooses to depict three of the more picturesque stories –stoner stories, one might say– from the time when it was easier to catch a “square grouper” (a pot bale thrown to the sea from pirate planes or boats) than a real one on Florida waters. It was the time of the redneck pirates from Everglades City, the church that used cannabis instead of hosts, and Robert Platshorn, who was convicted for marihuana trafficking and sentenced to 64 years (!) in prison.