rakontur blog

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Clubland takes you inside the epicenter of the hottest party scene in the world - Miami’s South Beach - offering unprecedented access behind the scenes of the nightclub industry at its most competitive. Beyond the velvet rope, through the VIP lounges, past the DJ booth and right into the back office. This is the story of the money, the egos, the catfights and the controversies at the most popular nightclubs in town.

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Mass Appeal #46:

ALTERED STATE: Now that Tony Montana is on pajamas, it’s time to let his fairytale sleep. Rakontur’s documentaries deliver Florida’s raw, rugged and rich to your home. For real.

Right-click here to download PDF version

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MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE MAKING OF A NIGHTCLUB

By Brett O’Bourke
April 26, 2007

In a city as incestuous — on so many levels — as Miami, there is no more convoluted business than South Beach nightclubs. Twenty-three blocks makes for an awfully small town and those who stay in the game long enough will inevitably work together, screw each other over, work together again and screw each other over some more. Short fuses, short memories (the blow will do that to you) and short shelf lives for nightclubs, where three successful years is considered a good run, make for strange bedfellows and, often, great drama.

Few people understand that better than filmmakers Alfred Spellman and Billy Corben, whose latest documentary Clubland, a behind the scenes look at the making of the Mokai lounge, is soon to be released.

When ownership relationships went sour at Mynt in 2005, and Nicola Siervo, Rony Seikaly, Linley Edwards and Karim Masri decided to jump ship — taking key members of Mynt’s staff with them — and open their own club, the filmmakers were in the perfect position to capture it all.

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Meanwhile, the duo has plenty on their plate. Their last documentary, the critically acclaimed Cocaine Cowboys, is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged, straight-to-DVD franchise with Cowboys II due to hit shelves later this year. And work has begun on the middle part of Rakontur’s Miami trilogy, Rise and Fall, documenting the emergence of South Beach nightlife in the early ’90s and featuring the first post-jail time interview with former mafia henchman and club kingpin, Chris Paciello.

Score some action for yourself at www.rakontur.com

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The Power Issue

Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman

The Moviemakers

For all the politicians and well-meaning philanthropists on this list, none has the audacity to reveal as much about the city as Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman.

The filmmakers and Miami natives sent shockwaves through the 305 last fall with their critically acclaimed documentary Cocaine Cowboys, which traced the drug trafficking in Miami in the 1970s and ’80s. But it wasn’t just the warring drug lords or the sheer glee with which they rolled around in their cocaine and cash that made the tightly paced film so intriguing.

It was also the revelations that (like it or not) many of the high-rise buildings that fill the Miami skyline were funded with drug money, and that so much blood was spilled during these so-called “Cocaine Wars” that Time magazine once called the city “Paradise Lost.” Corben (who directs) and Spellman (who produces) received the Florida Film Critics Circle’s Golden Orange award for their efforts on this and Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, about a 1999 alleged rape at the University of Florida. That film won the duo a Special Jury Award at the Miami International Film Festival in 2002.

For a world that’s just as cutthroat but not quite as illegal — the nightclub scene — Corben and Spellman recently completely Clubland, which chronicles the opening of the Mokaï Lounge in South Beach. The team is currently in production on Cocaine Cowboys II: The Godmother Returns.

Casting a mirror on Miami is undoubtedly a trying yet intrinsically fun enterprise, as a sordid past (and present) full of sex, drugs, back-stabbing and more drugs can’t help but reveal unpleasant truths. The fact that we enjoy the spoils of such chaotic riches on a daily basis makes the steamy nastiness of it all even more enticing.

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Clubland, our new web series chronicling the cutthroat world of the South Beach nightclub business through the building and launch of Mokai, starts later this month.

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Miami Splice: Local filmmakers Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman document stories about the seedy side of Florida

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BEYOND THE VELVET ROPES

In the ultimate retrospective on the year, rakontur films bring you Clubland, a 24-episode documentary Web series tracking the ins and outs of South Beach club life. Produced by Alfred Spellman and Billy Corben, who brought us Cocaine Cowboys earlier this year, Clubland focuses on the trials and tribulations faced by Nicola Siervo, Linley Edwards, Karim Masri and Rony Seikaly when opening Mokai, the 23rd Street lounge that currently packs in the scenesters on a nightly basis. With cameras rolling at every meeting, walk-through and phone call, viewers get a glimpse of South Beach nightlife well beyond the velvet ropes. Like the trailer says, “the egos, the catfights and the controversies” are all there, especially when dealing with one-time partner Roberto Caan of Mynt. Check out the trailer at www.clubland.tv.

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