Inspiring Quotes from Avant Garde Filmmakers

This weekend, I will be hosting the Concrete Dream Film Festival, founded by Mulholland Drive actress Rena Riffel.  Part of preparing for this event has been to take a deep dive back into my film school days to rediscover avant garde, experimental and arthouse film.

Here are some gems I found!

Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”

“Failure doesn’t mean anything, it just means changing paths.”

“One does not go to the theater to escape from himself, but to reestablish contact with the mystery that we all are.”

“For a true artist, difficulties become opportunities and clouds become solid present.”

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

Maya Deren

I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick.

Jonas Mekas

As a film-maker and a poet, I feel it’s my duty to be an eye and an antenna to what’s happening around me.

I live, therefore I make films. I make film, therefore I live.

Man Ray

To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

An original is a creation motivated by desire.

David Lynch

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

Yoko Ono

Art is like breathing for me. If I don’t do it, I start to choke.

Art is my life and my life is art. Yoko Ono

Andy Warhol

Art is what you can get away with.

Kenneth Anger

Making a movie is casting a spell.

Luis Bunuel

Mystery is the essential element of every work of art.

The Concrete Dreams Film Festival is June 11-16 in Los Angeles, CA.  For tickets and information, click here.  This year, there will be a special guest appearance by cinema icon Phillipe Mora, who will be presenting the Phillipe Mora Award for Filmmaking.

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June 9, 2018June 8, 2018 by thekristinwest Categories: Art & Life, West at Work, What's Up with WestTags: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andy Warhol, art house film, avant garde film, Concrete Dreams Film Festival, David Lynch, experimental film, film, film incentives, indie film, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Luis Bunuel, Man Ray, Maya Deren, Phillipe Mora, Rena Riffel, Yoko Ono Leave a comment

Penny Wise Pound Foolish

Peruse this article from the Austin Business Journal on the debate on film incentives in the state of Texas.

If you’ve ever done a professional film budget, the often invisible costs of making a movie are massive:  permits, feeding  people, putting cast and crew up in hotels, renting vehicles, supplies, location fees.  A film of any scale involves a massive infrastructure, often localized, to support it.  The last budget I prepped, I had to price out renting a local herd of goats, feeding said goats and the cost of a local wrangler and stable fees.  It’s this detail and minutiae that really make the cost of film what it is–and profitable for locals that can cash in on it.

I really want to film in Texas.  Why?  It’s my home state.  It’s where many of my stories are.  It’s what I know.  I probably won’t.  Texas’ neighbors have better incentives.  I want to do something for my community and filming could bring massive influxes of money to a very economically vulnerable area.

When I was asked at the San Antonio Film Festival why I hadn’t spent more time filming in my home state, I said at the time that, “It was not where my opportunities were, where my education led me.”  I keep returning to that question.  Here’s another reason why, one I couldn’t quite articulate in the moment:

The state doesn’t commit to its film community.  

Why should I commit to spend potentially millions of dollars in the state?

Movies aren’t made overnight.  They are long-haul projects.  It may take a screenwriter a year to get a camera-ready draft.  It may take us a year or more to get funded.  It may take us several months of pre-production, which will likely involve traveling back and forth.  We try to hire locally qualified people for the crew.  We will be in your state 30-60 days just filming, 12 hour days and paying for food and hotels and ancillary services, like dry cleaning, local assistants, etc.  We may be in your state several months after that if there’s a great post-house.  We may spend money on a Texas premiere if it’s a Texas subject.

The stability of state’s commitment to arts funding matters.  It’s a risk management consideration.  If you’re always threatening to pull a plug on your incentives, it’s not enticing.

 The counter-argument is that film jobs are temporary jobs and that is true to a point, but if you invest in creating a community, the jobs will keep coming.  Just ask Atlanta.  It seems there are some in government that would much rather have its denizens chained to an overabundance of low-paying retail jobs than branching out into a more highly skilled, better paid, film position.

I think it’s very shortsighted of the Texas legislature to nix film funding.  You could film almost anything in Texas, such is the geological and architectural diversity.  This is a whole state issue, not just an Austin or Dallas concern, where much of the film making takes place.  There are many areas that could benefit from more filming.  And frankly, it’s unnerving when New Mexico is standing in as Texas on film.  It’s happening more and more often.

 There’s a poster on the wall at the UTLA Center, an older poster, red, of all the great films made in Texas, which was a promo poster done by the Texas Film Commission a few years ago.  I hope they have to update that poster soon, with new, great films being made in Texas, but  the legislature must seize the opportunity.

April 11, 2017 by thekristinwest Categories: In My Humble Opinion #IMHO, UncategorizedTags: #IMHO, Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, film, film budget, film festivals, film incentives, New Mexico, opinion, risk management, san antonio film festival, Texas, Texas Film Commission, UTLA 1 Comment