Get a glimpse into the next generation of films. We chatted up some international rising stars from Chapman University's graduate directing program to see what's coming. See stills from their work!
Get a glimpse into the next generation of films. We chatted up some international rising stars from Chapman Universityâs graduate directing program to see what's coming. See stills from their work!
BY By Steve Irsay
April 2, 2008 - 2:55 PM
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PHOTOS BY RALpH PALUMBO |
With its $41 million dollar, state-of-the-art Marion Knott Studios production facility and students from nearly 30 different countries, Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts is poised to produce some of tomorrow's great filmmakers. Meet four international rising stars in the school's graduate directing program.
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Petra Sunjo
CAMEROONGROWING UP My mum is not what you would describe as the typical African parent because she was very open with me. My dad, on the other hand, was the typical African parent. He was very loving and caring, but when it came time for me to start dating, it was a hard pill for him to swallow. What they had in common was encouraging me in my passion for acting.
DISCOVERING FILMMAKING I began acting at a very young age. Then I realized that most of the time, I had to wait for people to write scripts for me and I hated being in that position. I also decided that if I like acting, I might as well learn the other side of filmmaking. I thought there were so many beautiful stories from my country that I could tell, because most stories about Cameroon were told from an outsider's perspective, and I think Africa in general needs more stories from insiders.
INSPIRATION Women inspire me a lot -- strong women, women who have been faced tough odds but have been able to overcome them and become better people. People's sufferings inspire me: the child in the street who goes for days without eating, but struggles for survival on a daily basis; my people back home who tell me that they are looking up to me. They need their stories to be told.
FAVORITE FILM CHARACTER Celie Johnson played by Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple. I love that character because it shows us that you can overcome adversity by being a positive person. Celie is forced into an early marriage to a ruthless man, who treats her worse than dirt. She works hard to satisfy this guy, but one day she says enough is enough. She fights for her rights in her own subtle way. It shows that anyone can start a revolution at any point in their lives.
ONE MUST-SEE FILM FROM CAMEROON Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné ("The Great White of Lambaréné") by Bassek Ba Kobhio. It is about the life of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who went to Gabon, Africa and opened a hospital. The movie looks at colonialism through the eyes of the colonized, who didn't necessarily believe that the colonial masters had their best interests at heart. It is a reexamination of ourselves and of our acts.
CURRENT PROJECTS Sugar Cane, written by Hillary Layman. An old, authoritative grandmother gets her comeuppance
WORKING IN THE U.S. VERSUS CAMEROON I would like to be back and forth in both countries because I intend to do lots of stories that touch on both worlds. I've experienced both cultures and have a better understanding even of my culture now ever since I came here. Also, the misconceptions I had about Americans have changed a lot since my coming here, so I think it would only be fair to deal with both worlds, to help others with misconceptions like I had.
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Mike Villasuso
MEXICOGROWING UP My family is a large, middle class, Catholic, loud, hard-working, and know-how-to-enjoy-life bunch of people. They are mostly teachers and accountants. I was raised in Mérida, on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, surrounded by a lot of flavors, colors, Mayan ruins, music, and warmth. I always felt part of something bigger than myself.
DISCOVERING FILMMAKING I think through all my life I wanted to be a filmmaker, it's just that at the beginning, I didn't know what it was called. I wanted to be an inventor, then an actor, but when I was 11, I discovered that the guy behind all the aspects of moviemaking was the director. "That's what I want to be," I remember saying to myself.
EARLY FILMS Most of them were passion projects, but I must confess that I always had the support of an institution or government since my very first shorts. Unfortunately, I was not one of those kids with cameras and a lot of artists around. When I had my first video camera at 17, I was almost crying and with it, I taped everything and everybody. Then I started looking for support.
FAVORITE FILM CHARACTER I really like Roy Batty in Blade Runner because at the end of the movie, before dying, he ends being more human than the humans. I see that as a metaphor for tolerance and for coexistence -- that we must not shoot before listening.
IF I COULD WORK WITH ANYONE IN HOLLYWOOD... Guillermo del Toro as producer, Daniel Day-Lewis as an actor, Clint Mansell as composer, and a story by Alejandro Amenábar. Why? Because with a team like this, I would have to let them be in autopilot. I wouldn't even know how to start to articulate a word for any of them.
ONE MUST-SEE FILM FROM MEXICO Los Olvidados ("The Young and the Damned") by Luis Buñuel. It's one of the most powerful films of all time. Condemned in his time -- almost banned -- then celebrated at Cannes, and nowadays recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as an important documentation of the lives of children. It feels so modern, so alive and so perpetual even after half a century.
CURRENT PROJECTS Another Man, with a script by Chris Frazier. It's a drama about a couple that can't have children and
MY TIME IN OC AS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FILM The title would be Bittersweet Orange with Diego Luna. The plot will be about a boy who has never felt he belonged somewhere suddenly finding friends from allaround the world who share his burning passion for something. And with that collective passion, he finds that he's not as much of a weirdo as other people have made him out to be. And at the same time, that the world is not that different; that we share more similarities than differences.
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Nadia Hamzeh
SYRIAGROWING UP My father is Syrian and my mother is German. I have dual citizenship. Every summer my family and I visited our German relatives so I was raised bicultural and bilingual. Between the openness of the West and the conservativeness of the Middle East, it used to be difficult to find a balance. Today, I am glad to have had that privilege because I got to know two very rich cultures.
DISCOVERING FILMMAKING I was four years old when I started watching movies, especially American films. I knew then that I wanted to be part of films, so I became an actress. I got a degree in dramatic arts and acting in Damascus. I also studied modern and contemporary dance in Germany, and directing and choreography in France. I've worked as an actress in the Syrian industry doing theater, television and cinema. I felt that I had more to say and that I wanted to say it with film.
EARLY FILMS Paloma, a 20-minute short experimental "poetic documentary" about the environment, war and human rights. It was screened in the 2005 Films from the Emirates Festival in Abu Dhabi and in the Cinema Arabe Film Festival in Amsterdam in 2006.
APPROACH TO FILMMAKING Music is a very important part in making my films. Sometimes the inspiration of a whole story hits me from a piece of music. Also, I'm usually the writer, producer, director, and actor in most of the movies I make. I love to be involved in every step of the process.
FAVORITE FILM CHARACTER Forrest Gump. He is so sincere and vulnerable and true. When he loved, it was such a pure and deep love that never changed. Even though he had glorious moments in his life, nothing made him forget his one true love and this is what matters in life after all.
IF I COULD WORK WITH ANYONE IN HOLLYWOOD... Steven Spielberg. He has this unique ability of making different genres of films (sci-fi, drama, comedy, political) and yet he is successful, original and innovative in each one. I would love to work with Roger Deakins because I admire his cinematography, visual expression and light compositions, especially in the Coen brothers movies.
ONE MUST-SEE FILM FROM SYRIA Breeze of the Soul. It's a wonderful love story set in Damascus. It has a lot of depth and can be understandable on a universal level.
CURRENT PROJECTS I am finishing post-production and scoring of a comedy called Degenerate with fellow Chapman
MY TIME IN OC AS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FILM It would be called A Day in the Sun. The main character, Natalie comes to America to study film directing at a great art school in a little nice town called Orange. She rents a room in a beautiful 100-year-old house. The landlady has a wedding business in this house, so every weekend she throws weddings there. Happy people fill the house while Natalie struggles with her daily film school life, which is not a piece of cake. This amazing house becomes the location and inspiration for a lot of Natalie's films. After some time, Natalie meets someone she thinks is the love of her life. It seems to be too good to be true. Indeed, it was. He suddenly changes and pushes Natalie away. She doesn't understand why. Being a passionate actress, I would probably play myself (laughs).
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Adnan Ahmad
PAKISTANGROWING UP I was brought up with three other siblings. My upbringing revolved around family values and respect and understanding for each other. I watched a lot of TV, played cricket and read a few books. And I ate a lot of cake -- not just any cake, but good, homemade chocolate cake!
DISCOVERING FILMMAKING I saw Back to the Future when I was around nine and that is when I really felt for the first time that I wanted to play some role in the filmmaking process. That film provided me with a form of escapism when I was a child and it was made so well that I was convinced of the whole idea, and that on its own is magical. It made me curious about the whole process and made me want to be able to do the same.
EARLY FILMS I made a documentary on the major earthquake that hit Pakistan in October 2005. The film was initially focused on just creating health awareness among children at local schools, but since the earthquake had just happened, I wanted to cover an aspect of that as well. Thus, the documentary focuses more on children affected by the earthquake. It includes visits that I made to different relief camps that had been set up for people that had lost their homes and families in the earthquake.
APPROACH TO FILMMAKING Everything has a process, but like every art form, the best work comes from the soul and it is something that is felt and experienced rather than simply being pre-planned. A lot of my artistic choices are made based on what I feel and what I see when I close my eyes and less on always trying to find out the right way of doing something; not that this knowledge doesn't help, but my preference in most cases will be to trust my gut feeling.
IF I COULD WORK WITH ANYONE IN HOLLYWOOD... Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann and Mel Gibson. I really admire their work and connect with most of what they've done: Spielberg for his films and what he has achieved; Michael Mann for his visual storytelling style; and Gibson as an actor and filmmaker for creating films that don't hold back and are heartfelt.
CURRENT PROJECTS I am in the post-production phase for a short film about a six-year-old girl trying to find a heart to
ONE MUST-SEE FILM FROM PAKISTAN Khuday Kay Liye ("In the Name of God"). This film is about the difficult situation in which Pakistanis in particular, and Muslims in general, are caught up in since 9/11. It also addresses the gulf that is being created between extremist and liberal Muslims and is very relevant to our times today. The best thing about the film is that it rejects the notion of hate and accepts that of love and understanding.
For more information on Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, visit http://ftv.chapman.edu.
