Psychotropic Sunrise

Started by Alexandro, May 05, 2013, 07:43:55 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Alexandro

Didn't know where else to put this, but my good friends in Dominican Republic have uploaded a bunch of international films to watch for free during this emergency.

Among them, my film Psychotropic Sunrise. Also, a film I produced and premiered at Rotterdam, Drown Among the Dead. Another short we made in my company (El Valiente) and others. I highly recommend the Cardenas/Guzmán ones, Cochochi, Jean Gentil, Carmita, Sand Dollars for an out of the world Geraldine Chaplin performance.  All in all, it will be time well spent.

https://www.cinemaboreal.com/


jenkins

can you direct link to yours i can't figure it out personal embarrassment

Alexandro


jenkins

it's grossly good. it embarrasses the rest of the world how good it is, is what i'm saying. this is what i want. this is what nourishes me. when i shittalk other movies it's because they're not like this and it's the most obviously amazing so it absolutely befuddles me how everybody doesn't watch it movie i've seen since Permanent Green Light. here's a screencap of clouds



it's gorgeous from the first to last shot and you know something special is happening when you want to screencap the clouds. please forgive me if i botch the specifics but i believe the title refers to what this line transmits



and the whole kind of point is the movie feels like this



and drugs are heavily involved but the crux comes from friends as family. it's beautiful. it moved me in tremendous ways and as i mentioned i believe it operates in full capacity so there's no good reason it's not everywhere. it's the good kind of arthouse film and people should see this. good films should be seen and i don't understand--i truly don't understand--why some like this are seen and others aren't. i think that's the ugly side of the zeitgiest. i think that's art as a social apparatus. i think this movie is the real deal and everybody here should feel blessed to know Alexandro

shoutout to the fact that Mexican fashion from five years ago looks like American fashion today

Alexandro

thanks for all the kind words, jenkins.
psychotropic was a film made with pure love, and money... donated by a lot of lovely people. very early on it was clear we would not get the industry support for a film like this one. we tried every development grant, fund, diploma, everything. after that we tried all over for production support. with the exception of two of those "coproduction meetings" things, one from the morelia film festival and one from guanajuato, and with the exception of an award I received in a screenplay contest (which fed me and my family for months) we were roundly, emphatically and almost laughably rejected all over the world. but I just couldn't stop. I don't know what possessed me with this movie. the more "no's" I got, the more I resisted to scrap it. I was lucky in many many ways, and a whole town worth of people helped me, in all sorts of different ways. many of them through years, and eventually as I mentioned, with money via our version of gofundme and the likes.

when the film was done and we tried for the postproduction funds, the sad boring story continued. and when we went for festivals, we mostly got rejected, but by then I already knew what awaited.

there were no few people who warned me along the way, I was apparently doing everything in my power to make this film unappealing for the market. "your actors are too white, you need ethnical people for festivals", "there's too much music, latin cinema uses no music at all", "it's too funny, the humor dilutes the themes", "you are trusting too much people will get this". with my editor - who loved my first film and being one of mexico's top editors was willing to help me out for free - I got into an argument over a sequence which clearly didn't advance the story but I was dead set on keeping for personal reasons and because I believe story isn't everything, and by the third day of this, when he saw I was not folding, he eventually just lay the cards on me: "when you do things this way, you are saying to the people at festivals that you don't do things the way they like it, and they will shut you out, because they don't wanna hear about anyone doing things with this freedom, it's interpreted as capricious". I knew then that was it. But I couldn't change things because of festivals.

Sure enough, he was right. But I made the film I wanted, or as close as I could to what I envisioned, you know, within circumstances. One thing that I've always wondered is if people can see that this was not a microbudget film, but a nanobudget film. Most of the money went to musical rights. Nobody got paid. Even I was under a wrong impression. When we did the gofundme thing, we raised about 6000 dollars. Years later, some guy asked me how much had we spent shooting. I said about 6000 dollars, and my producer (we still work together) was right beside me and said "no, it was less". I said really? how much? He opened up the excel file, showed it to me, we did it we 3000 dollars. I really don't understand how.

WorldForgot

Ahuevo, Alexandro. An inspiring post --

Axolotl

Stumbled upon it while browsing Mubi (it's available to watch there) and loved it and jenkins pretty much covered why.

Congrats Alexandro :bravo:

Alexandro

Quote from: Axolotl on August 11, 2020, 05:01:53 PM
Stumbled upon it while browsing Mubi (it's available to watch there) and loved it and jenkins pretty much covered why.

Congrats Alexandro :bravo:

thank you axolotl! but what?!? I didn't know that. Is this mubi mexico??

Axolotl

Quote from: Alexandro on August 12, 2020, 11:31:39 AM
Quote from: Axolotl on August 11, 2020, 05:01:53 PM
Stumbled upon it while browsing Mubi (it's available to watch there) and loved it and jenkins pretty much covered why.

Congrats Alexandro :bravo:

thank you axolotl! but what?!? I didn't know that. Is this mubi mexico??
What? Haha no, it's available to stream on Mubi here in India. Hope you'll see some of that money.

Alexandro

So, it turns out the film was on Mubi at some point as part of a festival deal or something and they never took it down. We're still trying to get an answer ...

In any case, I didn't want to start another thread but there are several films out there from Bengala, the company that I co founded with several partners and I wanted to recommend viewing:

I'm no longer here
This one we coproduced, and it came to be actually via a short story contest we do every year where the treatment for this film won the top prize. It was shot in my hometown and I honestly love the final film. It had a bumpy ride at the beginning with festivals and so on but then it started winning awards and was picked up by Netflix (where you can stream it). It got shortlisted for the Foreign Language Academy Award, but sadly didn't make it to the 5 nominees. Still, I like it better than Druk :)

Midday Cowboy
Another one shot in my hometown (mainly), this one's a documentary about a poet who started out as Octavio Paz' favorite (he called him his successor) and ended up as a vagabond in Mexico City, until his mysterious and still unresolved disappearance.  It's also on Netflix.

Close Quarters
a kind of very uncomfortable drama on male sexual inadequacies, I understand it premiered this weekend on HBO Max, only in the US. So there's that.

Drown Among the Dead
artsy to the max, this is a Jodorowsky like fable we shot in the desert, really close to my former house and with absolutely zero money. the lead (who sadly passed away two years ago) is actually the lead in Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. Too weird for mainstream success, it still managed to go to many festivals, including Rotterdam. You can watch it here:
https://vimeo.com/219899393

El Valiente
Short doc, about an old rancher who faced up the drug cartel trying to take his house away from him. It's a very known story in Mexico, because the guy decided to send his family away and stayed in his ranch by himself, armed up, and waited for the sicarios to come. We are actually shooting the feature right now. This one is directed by the same guy from Midday Cowboy. Both got nominated for the mexican academy award. I co directed with him another short, which actually won, but I'll talk about it below.
https://vimeo.com/352149831

The Busty Doll
This I codirected with Diego, and we ended up winning the mexican academy award for short film doc. I feel weird describing it, so I won't. I don't know if it's viewable outside of Mexico via the filmin latino site. But I can share a private link if someone wants to check it out.

Mamartuille
Another short, fiction. Comedy. It was an absolute festival hit. I understand is currently on HBO. If it's not, very soon I'll update the info (I don't know if I can share that as of now).

In a few months there will be another feature of us on Netflix ("a netflix original") and a teen romantic comedy I cowrote which is actually the first mexican netflix feature film (not picked up but actually developed and produced by them). To be honest I have no idea how that will turn out, but it was a cool experience anyways.

I'll try to keep you guys posted on more stuff. Enjoy!

WorldForgot

Ahuevo!!! Genial, Alexandro ~
Las vere todas con tiempo, gracias por compartir.

Super inspiring !

jenkins

Quote from: Alexandro on May 22, 2021, 09:59:02 AM
The Busty Doll
This I codirected with Diego, and we ended up winning the mexican academy award for short film doc. I feel weird describing it, so I won't. I don't know if it's viewable outside of Mexico via the filmin latino site. But I can share a private link if someone wants to check it out.

lol I mean now I must check it out!!

God I got really into even reading those descriptions. Made me feel happy for you

WorldForgot

Raising my hand for a link toooo hehe

wilder


Alexandro

All right guys, I'll send the link.

I forgot... but we also did Road to Roma, the Roma making of which you can stream on netflix as well.
I was lucky enough to be on that set for one day, which was... well, awesome.
check it out if you haven't.