In your film, The Anna Cabrini Chronicles, you used 16mm film, digital, hand drawn animation and stop-motion. What inspired you to use so many mediums?

Madness. Actually lots of logic, emotions, and technical realities are at the core of why I chose to use so many different mediums to create Anna. The Anna Cabrini Chronicles, is a film that is actually playing back peoples deepest thoughts and ideas after being recorded on micro-cassettes...so immediately one must approach such a concept in a different light than a film that follows a straight narrative in what we tend to call reality. It shows the Second half of reality, the reality of an individuals mind and the thoughts, visions, and emotions that spiral in the catacombs of every living persons head.

Yet we did not have the budget to shoot a full feature on 16mm film, especially a film that deals with 4 monologues...The ratio was too high for the cash...so we had to come up with a way to capture monologue and tell the story in the most visually captivating way without sacrifice. DV allowed us to shoot and shoot and shoot those monologues along with the short dialogue scenes without the concern of cost after the fact.

Animation: Why? How better to shoot a floating angel sailing "High above the Mountains" and then there's casting a baby to be thrown into a fire by a mother who thinks he's the devil incarnate after having a vision of a black bird giving her a C-section, and finally a 50 year old man who is having trouble with getting an erection...These are images that either cost a fortune, or are just to controversial to use real actors...Not that I am an adversary to controversial, its just that I have to choose my battles and considering Anna gets reviews that consist of "like comparing Apocalypse Now to Bambi" one just figures he's chosen "the path of most resistance" to quote my composer Trey Spruance.

 

Passion, cash, passion, cash, obsession, and my megalomaniacal way of directing the Actors for The Anna Cabrini Chronicles. I stress this style of Directing for Anna because this was a film that had to be effective as it was designed to deter suicide, not just thrill and stimulate an audience into liking a good film. The characters in Anna had to either feel as real as possible and or so unbelievable that "no one could write that;" a reaction only obtained by True Stories...We kind of accomplished that thanks to my phenomenally pliable and dedicated actors Samantha Deane, Michael Childers, and Bryan Trujillo. Many think Anna is a documentary, not because it looks like one, because it definitely doesn't, but because people think Brooke's real and that I got some crazy right to film her death. I rehearsed my actors 3 hours a day, 3 - 4 days a week for 3 months...add the actor practicing for 2 - 3 hours a day when not rehearsing with me...we wanted to strip the identity of actor leaving only their character in tact ready to die. Each segment was shot in separate years, editing and earning money between shoots.

Leigh Hope Phillips, the actress that played Anna, got off easy; Leigh only had to be available for 6 years. We have great respect and admiration towards Leigh, without her there would be no Anna Cabrini, thank you again Leigh.

The animation luckily only took me 6 months to create.

In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, you talk about your personal experience with suicide. What made you decide to bring this subject into a film?

I call them the A's.

Some did, some tried, my closest cousin definitely did after years of battling with her depression. She was the screwdriver driven into my cranium to get me to howl like a deer in headlights and find away to speak out about the unhealing terror of suicide.

I am happy that my first feature was so important and socially valuable, yet understand that I would trade it for a night of laughter with my late cousin and just create a different serious and valuable film. So be it, thank Andrea, I believe there are many people who are appreciative of the creation of Anna Cabrini. Maybe we helped someone else.

Shit this is Indy Mogul I'm talking to...I hope your audience doesn't think this is some sort of nice-guy public service announcement that would play as an after-school special...This film is not nice-guy, this film is honestly brutal.

The Argus Courier calls your movie a "multi-genre film". What genre best describes your film if you were to label it? What were your intentions with making this film?

Silverlake Film Festival honored and awarded the film as "Best Experimental Narrative Feature" and Berlin Film Festival felt it belonged in Museums instead of Theaters. I generally call it Dramatic Terror. Terrorism is not designed to kill people it is designed to Terrorize you into action...The Anna Cabrini Chronicles terrifies you into Not Committing Suicide, it's my artistic career wearing a bomb strapped around its chest...Anna is Terrifying, not horrific, Anna is honest. Anna is a Narrative Drama; no more, no less.

Another aspect which confuses the topic of "genre" is the focus on individuals in a film. Each character has their own story, life, and mini-film within the feature. These stories only tie together because of Anna's obsession with documenting their lives. In order for me to create such an indivualized focus on characters, each story looks very different, cuts very different, sounds very different; the stories are the inner-dialogues of these characters, therefore a 21 year old girl looks at different colors than a 50 year old man, and a 12 year old skater punk watches more Skate V Videos than most. These various styles confuse the "genre" topic once again. Anna is a Narrative Drama, no more, no less.

How did you make a feature length movie on such a short budget? What did you spend the most on?

SIX YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The most Money was spent on Rent, Food, Gas, School Books, Pens, Paper, Gas, FILM! FILM DEVELOPING!! & FILM TRANSFER!!! Not to mention all the Hard Drives. I burnt through two computers in that time period too.

My producer, Elk 56, had a lot of stamina collecting and saving crews for the 5 years of filming. Our crew, like my animations, would morph on the snap of a finger, but always there, always dedicated and always willing to work for the art instead of the cash, I can't begin to thank them all, I still do every time I see one.

The cinematographers would switch as well, all except Christopher Blakey (Unheard Music: X the Band) who was top billed as cinematographer for 6 years of dedication and access to his two beautiful Bolex 16mm cameras and Lisa Yu the most dedicated Camera Assist ever. The relationship between cinematographers and I was strange for film. I had cinematographers who not only were operating some great shots, but they were there to watch my back as I shot the majority of the film. I know how to make something unique on film, they knew how to make something perfect on film, so it was always a great synergy. Different camera-people for different shoots helped prevent burnout as well.

Our Make-Up department also was unique per story with a different make-up artist for each story.

 

Now some people would pop in and out over the years like Thomas Schaefer credited as one of three Production Designers and Gore! Thomas is one of the rarest talents untapped in Los Angeles, what I used him for was his most basic skills, what he deserves to be doing is greater than Dark Crystal. He worked on everything except Merrick because Thomas was propping a System of a Down video during the Merrick shoot. So for Merrick I really got dirty and with the help of collage artist Mari Kono, UCLA art major Kirsten Oglesby, and other art monsters like Rubbergator, we built Merrick's room, Brooke's box, and all the Paper Mache' PTA beasts and toys.

So we did stuff like that to get this done. But remember I wrote a film that was like 4 films in one with different characters in each story...this really helps when you can't afford to finish shooting a film in 3 months or even 2 years.

Kodak also helped; for every roll we bought they gave us like 2 free! This was at a time when Kodak was watching their sales drop because of Indie-Films going Digital...Kodak wanted to remind Indie-Film that film was still the coolest and best medium to create motion picture on. They are correct.

How did you develop the four main characters? Are they composited of people you know?

You either did your research or have been following me around. Yes the main characters are a composite of people I have known, still know, and have been told about in detail, along with a bit of myself in Anna and Merrick.

The stories are not far reaching; they are your neighbors, your friends, your cousins, sisters, and mothers, with a twist of everyone in all of it. Suicide is not a mystery. As a society, we cloak suicide with mystery because of the emptiness that haunts those left looking into a grave of a loved one that just wanted to be dead. Sure this is a slight generalization because many suicides are a mystery, can't be pinned down to one reason, one mental illness, one rebellious nature, and be assured the film does deal with this very issue of why? what? where? Death by life. These characters are individuals with a multitude of reasons for their mental collapse and those thoughts are not far from many of the things that confuse, upset, and depress you as well.

 

You won the Best Experimental Narrative Feature Award at the Silverlake Film Festival in 2007 for the Anna Cabrini Chronicles. Did you expect to receive this kind of recognition?

Honestly I contacted the Cannes Film Festival first and foremost. I had no intention of going anywhere else. When you get Trey Spruance to agree to do your soundtrack after 15 years of saying no to everyone else you kind of look in the mirror and say, "Maybe the film is as special as you wanted it to be?"

I tried a few more major film festivals once again getting the most amazing rejection phone calls, and emails...or just being ignored like with Sundance. We found that the rejections were not based on merit but specifically based on Genre and Programming Conflicts. Like you pointed out in your question above about Genre, no one knew where it fit, it was too individualized as a film, it was not born to compete, it was born to be seen alone, without comparison to other competing films. That would not be fair to the individuals in the film that killed themselves.

This all inspired me to contact theaters up the West Coast and see if Movie Theaters would book my film like they do with everyone else’s. We played beautiful theaters including San Diego's Lyric Opera House, and the Castro Theater who all booked the film based on its merit.

 

Silverlake Film Festival's Saskia Wilson watched this happen and once the tour was complete she petitioned the Silverlake Film Fesitval to include the film into their program as a special honorary screening. Roger Mayer and Wally Urbie we quick to see the value of both the film and me as a Director/Producer and Self Distributor and joined Saskia in this effort. It was not until the night before the awards that Roger informed me that they were giving me their honorary Best Experimental Narrative Feature Award. I was highly honored and surprised for I was not in the competition and did not believe the film should have been. Roger assured me it was not a competition, that the award is unique to all films in or out of competition during the festival. That was Hot Fire and I bow and accept with pride.
I'm glad Anna Cabrini effects people, which is the greatest honor.

 

What drove you to become a filmmaker? Was this your first feature film?

Film and Music drove me to be a filmmaker. That's about all I remember...I wanted to do commercials in Junior High cause I thought commercials sucked, but then I started doing those school plays while watching movies and my best friend Madrone got a video camera and he and I would blast out a new short every weekend...then I heard there was this thing called Film School and that great colleges had great film schools and that was that, I was going to college for film, I was going to Cal Arts!!!! Then I got rejected by Cal Arts and got accepted to NYU Tisch for Film so I said screw California I'm goin' hardcore and learning the city that will tear you up unless you beat it down. NYU was awesome.

Yes Anna Cabrini was and always will be my first Feature film. This makes me feel good. This helps me sleep at night. No matter where I go from here, my first film was a serious piece of work that has and still does get honored and admired. This is my blessing to myself, this is my advice to all artists. Hit the water in a smooth speedy glide and make that first stroke your best. I was a swimmer, I once drowned and died, I was revived, so I take life seriously.

 

Are you working on any projects at the moment?

www.POLYMORPHproductions.com is my site. Go there for updates and back projects, lots to see!

I am working on new projects, and I have made a few pieces since the release of Anna. Let's recap first, "Unthinking Majority" music video for System of the Down's frontman "Serj Tankian." That was a hot anti-war piece that came out last summer on the Internet and then played theaters too at the time of the CD release.

Roseanne Barr and I are in co-hoots on a new feature film that I scripted for her as a Hanukah present. The film is a Drama in which you can laugh your ass off too.

Currently I am in the middle of a serious Film Challenge that I have put upon myself thanks to Trey Spruance and the Secret Chiefs 3. I am considering it my second feature yet I am sure the industry will not believe me, HA! Here's the deal, I and a crew shot the Chiefs doing two 40 minute sets at San Francisco's American Music Hall, now Dorenfeld (me) will do two 40 minute sets of Stop-Motion Animation; I have 2 months to complete this. This will be some surreal-feature let me say that, and yes there is a concept, characters, storyline, and the looping quest of Theology.

This summer I have been asked to curate an animation program for the 1st Annual Downtown LA Film Festival. I will be premiering new Bruce Bickford animation and my new Secret Chiefs Animation. I advice all to come.

What would you recommend to all the independent filmmakers out there that are still making movies on a shoestring budget?

Write a killer script about something that matters. Suicide, and my sensitive serious take on the matter is what allowed this film to be made and picked up by Theaters on the West Coast. Nobody really cares about a "bag of money" film from a first time director.

and

Take your time. If you have no money now, you won't have any money next week either, so take your time and hurry up and get the shot because you have to pay your rent. There is no magic here, you must be dedicated and believe your work has value, that is the only way you are going to complete a film on a true shoe-string, and yes Anna Cabrini was a True Shoe-String, more so in comparison to films like The Blair Witch Project. We spent less and created a huge honorable debt of favors that I am happy to pay back every time.

Now go get the film. I am sole-distributor so yer not wastin' your hard-earned cash on some giant corporate beast feeding films that you don't want to see with that bucks you bought the DVD with. ;)

Thanks.

www.AnnaCabrini.com