IXFF Spotlight: Paul Festa
By Kuono • Sep 15th, 2009 • Category: Blog, Film Fest
We caught up with a couple of finalists for the Good Vibrations Indie Erotic Film Fest, and asked them about their films that will be premiered at the competition screening at the Castro Theatre on September 17th (for more details and tickets, visit gv-ixff.org). Here’s our GV Magazine IXFF Filmmaker interview with Paul Festa!
LET ME TELL YOU JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL (2003 / 2009)
Paul Festa:
Late in 2002, when John Cameron Mitchell solicited 10-minute audition videos for his “Sex Film Project” to create a nonpornographic, sexually explicit movie (the final product would be called Shortbus), I had no idea how to make a film. But I had an idea for an audition video, and I had iMovie on my computer, and I had a deadline, so poof! I became a filmmaker.
The idea was to tell the story of The Breeders, a memoir I’d just written about an affair I’d had with a married couple who resembled my parents. The narration was a mock radio interview with Terry Gross – whose questions were represented by text tiles that sounded eerily like her. Dirty Polaroids I’d taken with the couple provided visuals, along with old home videos, blow-up doll sex scenes, and other materials not usually associated with legitimate smut.
I didn’t quite get permission to use those Polaroids in the audition video, and when I saw the Good Vibes call for entries, I finally asked. The answer was no. So I sat down with the audition tape and boiled it down from its 10-minute narrative form into the 3-minute music video it is today. What I like about the new version is the way the story comes through in shards, in remnants – it’s a little bit like looking at some crumbled ancient statue or incompletely stripped Victorian and using surviving details to reconstruct the original. I also like that it’s both the first film I ever made and the most recent, and I’m thrilled for it to be my first work to screen at the Castro.
Thank you and best of luck to Paul Festa , whose film will be premiere at the Good Vibrations Indie Erotic Film Fest competition screening at the Castro Theatre on September 17th (for more details and tickets, visit gv-ixff.org). More about Paul Festa can be found at paulfesta.com (paulfesta.com).
Kuono >> Magazine Editor, Web Producer at GoodVibes.com and manager of the Good Vibrations Affiliate Program (GVAffiliates.com). Okay, back to work.
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