A tale of two friends: NM-made 'Berbin Dusties' to screen as part of AFMX at Guild Cinema

Jac Roberts is no stranger to making films.

He’s been in the independent film industry for over 20 years and been at the helm of many productions ranging in scale.

The short film, “Berbin Dusties,” will screen at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, at the Guild Cinema. It is part of the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience which takes place through Sunday, Oct. 1, around Nob Hill. The film will be shown in Block 18 of the festival.

Roberts says the the premise behind “Berbin Dusties” is simple – one man drinks to remember, the other drinks to forget.

“I wanted to shoot something small and character driven,” he says. “However, without giving anything away, once I saw an infomercial that was selling a saw chain (for cutting high-up branches in trees) I knew I had to incorporate the tool into the story for maximum effect.”

Roberts and his crew filmed the production over the course of two weekends in March.

There were some practical makeup effects that took almost a year after the initial production to develop and refine, but ultimately, it took an extra few hours to shoot.

“(It was) at night, in the bitter cold.”

Filming took place at a friend’s house in Tijeras – a perfect spot for capturing the two characters in the woods.

“The gag shot, however, was filmed in my backyard and we did our best to fool the camera into making it look like the same woods,” he says.

There are only two actors in the film – Paul Bloot and Bill Sterchi.

Roberts says he worked on previous projects with the pair.

“It was an easy choice to cast them and write the script specifically for them,” he says. “Hannah Macpherson wrote the script for me. The two leads are professional and offer a grounded perspective on the project.”

The short film runs about 17 minutes and Roberts says there’s a slow burn to the movie.

“It’s really about the dissolving of a relationship — best friends learning bitter secrets about one another that forces a shift within their understanding of one another,” he says. “If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.”