Wednesday 10 June 2020

Interview with filmmaker Cristobal Santana

The Disappearance Of Audrey will premier at the Straight-Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival

*How did you get into making movies?  
I always wanted to make movies the problem was that the cinema was always in 35mm so no filmmaker with little money could make movies, when the cinema was digitized there was the opportunity to make my first movie, it was an odyssey why nobody was betting  By a screenwriter who wanted to direct his first film at that time, about 2007, he had directed several short films and wanted to make my first feature film, but all the producers closed their doors to me, it was at the end of 2015 that with a lot of effort I bought my first professional camcorder and so  To be able to bet on myself in production, now came the big question: What film could I make and what would be suggestive to the public? That's how the idea for The night of the living dead 2 came up, I spoke with several directors for the project but none accepted, so I decided to move from production to directing and to both tasks and I'm still doing them. 

*What inspired you to make your movie? 
The night of the living dead 4 comes from the success of its predecessors, 2 worked very well 3 worked better and the public wanted more they wanted more of these stories, when you already do two sequels and the public is still waiting more you have to find a good one  story to somehow overcome the previous is what the audience wants, this quarter is a very personal film for each character the plot is seen and lived by several of the film's protagonists I liked that idea that I had partly brought in the  second and the third film in the mockumentary format but in the fourth is a story of personal drama not only that of the protagonist but also that of all those who appear in the film. For Audry the main idea is that I wanted to make a mystery movie but I did not know very well in which direction to take the story, this movie has a great influence on the legendary Twin Peaks series and I wanted to do something like that, I did not want a simple one  mystery movie where a body appears and in the end they catch the murderer so I began to include in the story inexplicable things like the appearance of Audry in a photo with the same aspect with which the dream world disappeared thirty years ago and the  They are actually intermingling. I loved making this movie. It was something different from what I had previously done. 

*How has your style evolved?  
You have evolved in several things, you have more experience behind the camera, you are more careful with the details of the aspect of the film, each film has its style and from each one you learn more and more as a screenwriter, producer or director. 

*Tell us some strange or funny story while making the movie?  
In the night of the living dead 4 I remember one that had to shoot the same scene at the same point several times because the actors at that point made someone laugh and it was contagious he gave us almost the night for a sequence of several  minutes, the same thing happened to remember in the scene where the protagonist is handcuffed to the bed and she struggles with her hand and surprise the handcuffs break so we had to stop filming for about an hour to get them repaired. In Audry the scene where Audry is seen sitting with another strange character and the protagonist took a long time to film was shot on three cameras simultaneously at different angles but for some strange reason that day there was a lot of background noise people were listening talking  various places of the location so we shot over and over and over the actors were a little tired and they laughed at the situation until they could make the scene. 

*Do the Misrule movie movement and Pink8 manifesto remind you?  
Thanks to pink8 and the Misrule movement, independent filmmakers were able to make films, as already said, making cinema was only available to a few lucky people, now the filmmakers have tools and a contest where they can make themselves known. 

*What can we expect from your next movie?  
I return to terror in this October, Camfear 2 is released along with the series of the same name, both the film and the full series of six episodes will be released on the same day.