All Entries Tagged With: "film"
Kusho and Jean: A Conversation with Two Student Filmmakers
If not money, time, nor a top-notch technical education, what is it that makes filmmakers successful? What drives them, even before their first big break? What do they envision on the big screen and how do they plan to actualize that vision?
I had a chat with two aspiring filmmakers from Californian liberal arts school, Soka University of America. Sarah “Kusho” Kakusho graduated from SUA in May 2010 and is currently working on the 48 Hour Film Project in L.A. Jean Marcus Silva is a rising senior from Brazil. With a passion for creative writing, he discusses the literary relationship he shares with film and how it was shaped by classes he took at SUA.
Tell me more about the 48 Hour Film Project in LA and your work.
Kusho: 48HFP is, in a nutshell, a competition where teams write, shoot and edit a film in 48 hours. The catch is each team draws a genre that the film must adhere to, as well as include the character, prop, and line that is required in the movie. It’s something I registered for in hopes of getting my name out there in the film industry. It’s also a way for me to find my niche within the industry, like what types of films I’m into making (although I have to say, I’ve enjoyed everything from documentary to avant-garde). Recently, I created an experimental series of 60-second shorts for my senior thesis to try to reconstruct our lives on-screen as single 60-second moments strung together. It was quite an interesting turn-out. However, through the 48HFP, I’m looking at a change of pace again and looking to do more of a narrative.
Tell me about your film education history/projects as well as what’s in store for the future.
Jean: Film entered my life by chance, and at SUA. I want to be a writer, but as I hung out a lot with aspiring filmmakers, I started to see in screen writing another route for my own dreams. Then, I realized that screen writing and novel writing have nothing in common besides language. So I took a couple of film classes at SUA, which are basically film history courses ending with a final project. In these classes, one directly based on film and the other exploring the analog and digital, I understood that in order to make movies you have to watch movies. A lot of movies. This is the basic insight for writing. The actual techniques of what to do and what not to do are completely irrelevant and better acquired through trial and error. What you actually take from the classes are a shortcut to movies, and movies are classes in themselves. So, my current project is basically playing with the language of film making; leaving for a bit the realm of screen writing and actually doing movies. It is a short movie with a ridiculous plot but the cinematic narrative (angles, cuts, colors) is much more important. This encompasses what I’ve learned about filmmaking: it is a completely unique narrative and we have to steer away from literature to fully express it.
What is your big dream in terms of film?
Kusho: Inspired by Hayao Miyazaki of Ghibli Studios (most known for Totoro and Spirited Away), I want to inspire and motivate people through motion picture. I see film as a means to connect people — connect people to those in their immediate environment, connect to those across borders, and fundamentally to connect people to their inner humanity. Having studied abroad in another country for 5 months and looking at our culture through a different perspective, I began to see positive and negative aspects of our country. People were being sucked into the negative perspective of our reality that the media was streaming and even I found myself becoming more depressed hearing the news. Taking what I’ve observed, I hope to convey more of the positive bits of our world to battle all of the negativity and pessimism that I feel we as youth are drowning in today.
Jean: My biggest dream is to create a comprehensive expression of film narrative that tells good stories. That is basically my life’s dream: to be able to tell stories. And film is a way of doing that.
What role has your education played in developing your career?
Kusho: SUA being a liberal arts college, I completely take the “liberal” aspect to heart. Every learning cluster (a month-long study period during which students and professors may create a class on any subject they want to study), I tried to focus my studies on film. After studying at an actual film school in Buenos Aires when I studied abroad for a semester, I really appreciated the well-rounded education I was receiving at SUA. It’s one thing to make films that you want to make, but it’s another thing to make films that you want to make that will create some kind of impact or connection. So taking classes such as Intro to Anthropology or Philosophy was actually a great way to understand how humans think and behave in given situations. Again, my experiences abroad introduced me to a different perspective of the way I was living and how I began living after that. I was able to observe people who had, more or less, grown up in a more homogeneous society than the United States. Being around different cultures allowed me to really see the slight nuances in people which became great inspiration for the film I made to compliment my senior thesis. Film is a representation and reflection of our very lives so to make films, we first need to understand ourselves.
Jean: My education, so far, has been a quicker way of discovering the paths I would have eventually found on my own, in a lot more time. Good movies, good books, good talks – all these led me to build my grand life narrative. It is not about content, but about passion and horizons, to accept how others think so I can find unusual paths of my own.
What’s the one tip you’d give to aspiring filmmakers?
Kusho: Personally, I invested a lot of money on buying books about filmmaking and getting the “right” equipment for the “right film look,” but what I found most effective was to just watch a lot of different movies and have passion, patience and perseverance. When watching a movie, ask yourself: how was the shot done and what can I do to replicate it? What about this film makes me feel this way? Doing a film analysis while watching a movie helped me understand the nuances in films that give them the vibrance and life that attract us to them. After gaining the “theory,” the keys are passion, patience and perseverance. Beethoven’s motto was “No day without a line,” meaning he never lived a day where he didn’t write music, no matter what was going on in his life. I think this is also true to the art of filmmaking. Nothing should stop you from making films. Forget the expensive equipment and criticisms. Being on a low budget means being more creative in how you do things.
Jean: Do it! Don’t wait until you have equipment or money to make movies, just go ahead and do it. Think about the resources you do have and make a movie using them. Especially nowadays, it has become cheaper to own a camera. Even a cell phone camera is enough. Like the great Brazilian film maker Glauber Rocha would say, “A camera on your hands and an idea in your head.” I don’t personally like Glauber Rocha’s movies but they did possess an incredible expression of Rocha’s narrative and it was brilliant. Your first movies might stink, but that’s the way to learn. If you only have a digital camera and a 5-inch tripod, make movies where those angles of the camera are used and don’t move it because of the shakiness. Don’t try to mimic big box office features. You won’t have the resources. And of course, improvise. There is always something that will help your project, and for free. Nothing professional is required. The important thing is to try.
What’s the one big idea on your list that you’d do if time and money weren’t an issue?
Kusho: I’d create an epic tale about the journey of young people taking a stand to change their seemingly falling society in the midst of a warring world. Everything begins with a shift in perspective.
Jean: I would love to do an adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, a book from Douglas Adams. In terms of film narrative, it would be a challenge and a blessing at the same time.
The Los Angeles 48 Hour Film Festival kicks off this Friday, August 13. Visit the website for information and to get tickets to see the films.
48 Hour Film Photo: Team Gefilte Fish Eye shoots ‘Damned Love’ in Tel Aviv in 2008. (4/17)
The Story of Stuff: The Book
The popular short film, The Story of Stuff, created by Annie Leonard, an environmental health and justice activist in 2007, has recently been made into a book, The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health – And a Vision for Change.
The 20 minute film is driven by the thesis, “you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely.” It explores true costs of our consumer culture, examining what really goes on behind extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, revealing how lopsided and unfair this system is to most of the world. Furthermore, it investigates the notions of “planned obsolescence,” the creation of goods that aren’t meant to last very long, and “perceived obsolescence,” marketing schemes that convinces people they need newer things.
Leonard spent over a decade traveling the world trying to answer the question, “Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?” She compiled all of her research and compressed it into the 20 minute film. With the book, Leonard goes more in depth with the findings of her research and shares her experiences of seeing the detrimental effects our consumerist society is having on the planet.
Both the film and the book are eye opening and give the viewer and reader a new appreciation for the things we own. It presents a convincing argument that true happiness lies not in owning more, but in owning less and owning our belongings for a longer amount of time. In addition to bringing happiness, owning less will allow for a more sustainable planet.
Check out the film here.
Find out what you can do about this issue at The Story of Stuff website.
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
Today, March 8, 2010, is International Women’s Day and we have a salute to an amazing woman who could have ended up a statistic but instead ended up a star. She is called Precious and her story is so difficult to watch you want to turn away from the screen and yet so compelling you can’t.
Last night, Precious: Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, was honored at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. Co-star Mo’Nique won the award for Best Supporting Actress and though she didn’t win in her category, star Gabourey Sidibe received great praise. It was a huge success for a small, indie movie which further goes to prove that the message of the film is true, with hard work and drive, you can be what ever you want to be.
Precious: Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire is the unflinching story of a young woman seeking salvation from a sad, bleak life. Precious is trapped in many ways. For one, she can’t read. She’s also pregnant by her father with her second child. Her first child, nicknamed Mongo (short for mongoloid) has Down’s syndrome. She says of school, “There’s always something wrong with those tests. They paint a picture of me with no brain, my mother, my whole family as less than dumb, just ugly black grease to be wiped away. Sometimes I wish I was dead.” She has been locked out of mainstream America by poverty, her gender, her size, her color.
The film opens with Precious in school. She says in a voiceover, ”Every day, I tell myself something going to happen. I’m going to break through, or someone is going to break through to me.” And someone finally does. She gets transferred to an alternative school and makes an emotional connection with her peers and more importantly her teacher, Ms. Rain, played by Paula Patton with equal parts weariness and dedication. Through the relationships she manages to build, she finds shelter against the storm of abuse and poverty in her life.
However, it’s her relationship with her physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive mother that lies at the heart of Precious’ pain. And her mother is the worst kind of monster. She has the cruelest tongue. She alternatively hurls insults and objects at a passive Precious. She is relentless in her abuse and we learn pretty early on that in her mind, she is in a twisted competition with Precious for the sexual attention of her boyfriend, Precious’ father. When she tells Precious “Don’t nobody want you, don’t nobody need you.” we know that those words have dug a well worn path between them. But even she is a nuanced character in no small part due to the performance of actress comedian, Monique, who plays her as if she has been possessed by the character. Though she has spread a lot of evil in their world, she has done it out of a misguided attempt to be loved. Ultimately, the monster is powerless; sad and piteous.
It’s not easy to tell a difficult story in a way that keeps us engaged, but director Lee Daniels does just that. The pacing of the film works well. There are many short scenes while at the same time, the emotional content of the film is allowed room to breathe and unfold slowly, like life does. Although there are many tragic moments, some scenes end with a slow fade out or a cat fleeing the room where a beating takes place.
Often times we watch movies to escape reality and sometimes it’s hard to make the time to sit down and spend two hours in a bleak world. But film exists for many other reasons than mere entertainment. It gives life to difficult, important stories that are often left out of mainstream dialogue.
Not that there aren’t some sweet moments. The relationship she builds with the world-weary, smart, sarcastic girls in the alternative school, with her patient, realist social worker, played by a kind but fatigued, Mariah Carey sans make-up, and with a male nurse, played by an impossibly young looking Lenny Kravitz. The film lightens and brightens as their ties grow stronger.
The film is also punctuated by her fantasies of being famous, being loved, being beautiful. Daniels shot these scenes Technicolor bright, a rainbow contrasted against the drabness of the real world. One could see these scenes as making the movie sadder, but for me, it proved that hope lived in her soul. She is kept alive by picturing her utopia. Without it, she would be the walking dead, soulless. The film doesn’t give us a saccharine ending, it can’t and still stay responsible to the material.
There is humanity at work in this film that is nakedly profound and sometimes hard to look in the eye. Part of the silent agreement of being a participating human being is seeking these moments out and letting them resonate within us.
Precious: Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire bows on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow, March 9.
An Oscar Nominee: Burmese Military Oppression
On Sunday, March 7th, the Oscars will be giving out awards to this past year’s best films. One of the potential winners is the documentary “Burma VJ” which stars U Gawsita, a Buddhist monk from Burma who has been living as refugee in Utica, NY for the past year.
“Burma VJ”is about a peaceful protest lead by monks in 2007, in which over 100,000 Burmese people took the streets protesting against the cruel military dictatorship that has been burdening the country for more than 40 years.
Though all foreign news medias were banned from capturing the event, a group of undercover Burmese video journalists put their lives on the line to secretly capture the protest which eventually became this documentary.
One would imagine that being the star of an Oscar nominated documentary would have its perks, this has not been the case for U Gawsita. The release of “Burma VJ” in 2009 allowed the world to see the cruel oppression of the Burmese military government, but it also resulted in many death threats sent to U Gawsita and the various monks involved in the protest.
So over a year ago, with no alternatives but death, U Gawsita fled his home country for Thailand, traveling by foot at night and finding asylum in jungles and fields during the day. All the while the Burmese Military Police lingered close behind raiding monasteries while trying to track down U Gawsita.
After more than month of fleeing, U Gawsita finally reached Thailand and disguised himself as a bus fare collector only to be arrested by Thai authorities as he did not have a refugee status. With the help of the U.S. Embassy, U Gawsita and other displaced monks were offered to resettle in the United States. U Gawsita was assigned to stay in Utica, NY.
Talking about the film, Agga Nya Na, one of the fellow English speaking monks, said, “We hope this movie can bring awareness.”
Far from danger, yet far from home, what U Gawsita and his fellow monks will be thinking about this coming Sunday is not whether they’ll be bringing home an Oscar, but instead how this nomination and possible win will aid their fight to achieve, “what we believe is truth — that is democracy, freedom for our people.”
Here is the trailer for Burma VJ.
Source: here.
