MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

By Nicholas Rodriguez

Failure is a word that gets used a lot when it comes to artists. That story is that we won’t be able to succeed because of how improbable it is. Every once in a while, though, one artist gets through the cracks and their story inspires the rest of us to keep trying. On March 8^th, not only did we meet one, but three filmmakers that made it through those cracks. I had the extreme pleasure of being at the Olympia theater with this year’s Knight Heroes: Stella Meghie, Joe Talbot, and local filmmaker Lulu Wang. They came and told us their amazing stories and showed us that success is possible if you put it in the right amount of work.

The first filmmaker to approach the stage to tell their tale was Stella Meghie. She’s known for her new movie The Photograph. She began by talking to us about how she got started and the journey she took in making her first film Jean of the Joneses. She spoke about how hard it was for her, and also, every filmmaker trying to make a movie. It was nothing but rejections because no one wanted to finance the film or even work on it. Instead of just putting the film on the shelf and giving up on the project, she kept fighting for it. She also talked about how she annoyed people to death to work on it; this what she liked to call being “scrappy.” She went about getting funding in an unusual way, even though she was advised multiple times that it wouldn’t work. She didn’t listen, and she continued on with her plan, and it worked. She got the funding for the movie. She fought hard and didn’t take no for an answer. When someone tried to put her down or say that it would be impossible, she proved them wrong. With all that hard work, she got her movie made and had her foot in the door, allowing her to release a movie every year since and to work with a major studio for her latest release The Photograph.

After Stella came Joe Talbot. He came up onto the stage and spoke about his movie The Last Black Man in San Francisco. He talked about how much that story meant to him and how he wanted to capture his memories of a place while they were still there. He also spoke about the struggles he went through. About the difficulty in finding someone to believe in him and how he would be envious of his friends that moved from their hometown and achieved something in their life. He was getting ready to give up, he even went back to school to see if he could learn anything else. This was when he met his filmmaking family.  They would have late-night conversations, came up with the idea to make a concept trailer for the movie as a fun little thing to do. They put the trailer on Vimeo, and like wildfire, the trailer spread around and got news coverage. Talbot got to make his film. Once it was done, he saw himself as the main character and decided that it was time for a new chapter in his life, it was time to grow from where and whom he used to be. His city was growing up without him, that’s why he made the movie, and the experience made him grow up too.

Last but definitely not least, was homegrown Lulu Wang. When she came up, she spoke about her recent film The Farewell. She spoke about how no one thought that the movie was really going to be as good as it was, or whether it should even be made. She showed the script to her father and he didn’t think that anyone would be interested in hearing the story of their lives. The people funding the movie also said the same thing; they didn’t think anyone would want to see a film where people are just continuously eating and talking. She then took those people to China, where they realized that eating and talking is part of their culture. She fought to keep the story genuine, and she won. It was so good to hear her tell her story about how she made the film, mainly because we, as young filmmakers, can look at her as an example and say, “YES, I CAN DO THIS”!

Being a young filmmaker is not easy. Because you have so much to prove and are always being reminded about the difficulty and discouraged from pursuing your dream. Seeing these three filmmakers talk about how they started and seeing how they got where they got was very inspiring and self-assuring that my dream is not that crazy after all. With all three directors, I learned something different from the process. Stella: I learned that you’ve gotta fight for what you believe in; you can never take no for an answer; it’s your story, and your dream and no one should nor can take you down. Lulu: The story that you tell is your story, and no one should be able to tell you how it should go or how it should be told. Joe: That eventually, we have to grow from our comfort zone and take a shot because you never know who out there will be interested and push you to actually make it. These three amazing directors had such an impact and added a fire  when it comes to making movies. They made time to come talk us and showed us that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that’s why not only are they heroes, but Knight Heroes.