You might not think of Reade Street resident Amy Sewell as a big-time Tribeca filmmaker. And you'd hardly expect to find the 5th-graders of Tribeca's P.S. 150 up on the silver screen. But when the sun sets April 24 and a new feature-length documentary brightens the screen at the Tribeca Film Festival's "drive-in" near Battery Park City's North Cove, Sewell and the kids will be there among the throngs, watching their film.

		The documentary is "Mad Hot Ballroom," conceived by Sewell in her first foray into movie-making, and co-produced with her friend Marilyn Agrelo, who makes her directorial debut. Riding a wave of excitement over the film earlier this year, the pair penned a deal with Paramount Classics and the film is poised for its New York premiere and national release. And it all started with a hip-swinging meringue at P.S. 150. For four weeks in the spring of 2003, Sewell followed the school's 5th-grade ballroom dance class for a four-page feature in The Tribeca Trib. She watched the 10-year-olds develop from shy novices, hesitantly touching their partners and awkwardly trying their first ballroom steps, into swinging, swiveling dancers prepared for city-wide competition.
"I was mesmerized," said Sewell. "And I thought, this would make a great movie." Turning 40 and with twin daughters in kindergarten at P.S. 234, Sewell saw herself at a crossroads. Looming ahead was a reluctant return to a full-time desk job in marketing. "I felt like this is it," she said. "I have to put myself out there. You could call it a mid-life crisis, but I didn't get a sports car or a boyfriend." (She is happily married to Charlie Sewell, a teacher and her husband of 13 years.) For years Sewell regularly met her friend, Agrelo, who worked in film production, for a glass of wine at Odeon. "Let's make a movie together," Sewell would say. "About what?" Agrelo always answered. In the summer of 2003, Sewell told Agrelo what she had seen at the neighborhood school and about the Dancing Classrooms public school program run by American Ballroom Theater. Sewell and Agrelo spent months scouting schools, getting clearances from parents and permission from the Department of Education to film during school hours, and securing music licensing agreements. For funding they turned to friends (who also helped out with babysitting), family and private investors, managing to raise the half-million dollars the movie would cost. "It was extremely low budget by industry standards, but it felt extremely high budget to us," Sewell said. The filmmakers chose classes at three schools in very different neighborhoods: P.S. 150 in Tribeca; P.S. 112 in Washington Heights; and P.S. 115 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. For four months, the small crew filmed the 10- and 11-year-olds and their teachers in school gyms and music rooms. Allison Sheniak, the 5th-graders' teacher at P.S. 150, likened the experience to being on a reality TV show. "It was so unreal with these cameras following us around," she said. "You feel like you're normal, but you still feel like you're being watched." In the film, the kids leap into fox trots and rumbas with sweet innocence and infectious exuberance. As they grow more poised and confident, they seem to inch ever closer to the end of childhood. Off the dance floor and among themselves-boys and girls in separate groups-they candidly reveal their feelings as "tweens." Sewell said she had two main goals with the film: to give the kids a chance to see themselves on screen, even if she had to rent a theater to do it, and, somehow, to pay back the investors. She need not have worried. In January the film was shown at the Slamdance film festival, held in Park City, Utah, at the same time as the higher-profile Sundance festival. After two well-received screenings, the buzz around the film was intense. Unbeknown to the filmmakers, the third and final screening was packed with high-level studio representatives. "You could tell the reactions were very good," said Agrelo. "They were clapping. They were cheering. But I saw during the screening something that was really annoying. People were on their BlackBerrys. They were e-mailing. I thought, God, this is so rude." No sooner had the credits started to roll than the audience was rushing for the door. Sewell, Agrelo and several of the kids in the movie, on hand to answer questions, were stunned. What they soon learned was that "Mad Hot Ballroom" was the object of a bidding war that would go on through the night. By morning, the documentary had been sold to Paramount Classics for a reported advance of $2.7 million. "[That screening] will no doubt become one of those legendary Park City showings that people talk about for years," wrote a reporter for indieWIRE.com. "Mad Hot Ballroom" was now a mad hot movie. "It's amazing to see two women take an idea and produce such a beautiful film," said Cathyann Lewis, mother of Tara Devon Gallagher, one of the P.S. 150 students in the film. "You just had no idea it was going to be so big." Mostly Sewell is relieved that she and Agrelo can pay off their investors and lawyers. "We were told over and over again that documentaries don't make money," she said. She repeatedly stresses the collaborative effort by the whole film crew, especially Agrelo. "Marilyn turned this into art on film. This is so not about me." Sheniak, who shepherds her class through the competition in the film with boundless energy and copious tears, said that when she first saw the film, "I cried even more than I did when it was happening." The teacher wonders how people she sees every day-at the IPN Deli, Yaffa's and the Food Emporium- will react to seeing her in a movie. "Eddie at Bazzini is going to be like, 'You're in a movie? You're not just a teacher?'" she said. "It's going to be different." As Sewell awaits the Tribeca Film Festival screenings, she continues to juggle life as a mom and movie maker. One day she is in meetings, talking about publicists and 35mm cuts, and the next she's helping out at the school book fair. Posters for the film proclaim the tag line: "Ordinary kids. An extraordinary journey." Sewell reflected last month on her own extraordinary journey. "I'm pretty sure that if you ask other people, nobody ever would have expected this from me," she said. She plans to keep writing, and if a good story comes along, maybe even make another movie. But for now Sewell mostly looks forward to hanging out with her kids. "I like being Amy from the neighborhood," she said.