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Thursday, March 28, 2024
Mick Cusimano, at center in top photo, oversees filming on "Mermaids of Atlantis" during an August shoot on Plum Island. A still from shows three mermaids that wash ashore in the short, partially animated film.

Mick Cusimano, at center in top photo, oversees filming on “Mermaids of Atlantis” during an August shoot on Plum Island. A still shows three mermaids that wash ashore in the short, partially animated film.

Inman Square filmmaker Mick Cusimano posted a YouTube trailer today for “Mermaids of Atlantis,” a short film that includes a scene at Ryles. Cusimano, his crew and volunteer extras took over the jazz club and restaurant for about three hours Nov. 11 for the scene, in which “a villainous struggling seafood-restaurant owner” draws diners in droves to see a kidnapped mermaid.

Cusimano was grateful to the restaurant’s owner, who welcomed the shoot after a months-long search, and the unpaid extras who took part in the filming. For other scenes, Cusimano employed some “Medium Cool”-style cleverness in incorporating footage from a beach closed for a hurricane warning. (In the movie, the beach is closed because mermaids have washed ashore. In “Medium Cool,” Haskell Wexler filmed a fictional story amid the real-life violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.)

The 15- to 20-minute, partially animated film should be done next month, Cusimano said today, and be available shortly afterward for viewing on YouTube, Cambridge and Brookline cable access television channels and in film festivals.