THE FILM VERDICT: In The Box/La Caja, you worked with an Argentinean editor (Sergio Barbieri), a Chilean cinematographer (Sergio Armstrong G.), and an Uruguayan screenwriter (Laura Santullo); plus of course the Mexican actors and other technical and creative support. Is this collaboration across borders a more common way to film in Latin America or indeed anywhere in the world?
LORENZO VIGAS: I really enjoyed working with that group of talented professionals on La Caja. Producers and film funding entities must also accept and welcome this transnational, diverse way of making a movie: bring the best talent, wherever they may be from, whatever languages they speak, and work together as a team. It also broadens the film’s reach when film critics write for readers across language and geographical barriers.
TFV: Does your experience as a director of documentaries influence the way you direct narrative films?
LV: The Orchid Seller was a very personal, emotional film about my father, his paintings, and his relationship with his brother, which I needed to make. My documentary experience is very useful in allowing the editing process to be more flexible. I like taking risks and trusting my instinct, as when I choose a first-time actor over a professional one. We filmmakers need to take such risks to achieve authenticity and connect emotionally with the audience. I worked with first-time actors in both of my recent films. Actor Luis Silva in From Afar/Desde Allá now lives peacefully in Chicago and is married with one child, while several of his friends back home have been killed in gang violence. The Box/La Caja actor Hatzin Navarrete has become like a son to me, and his life is also changing. Now Hatzin will continue to grow as an actor and personally; he will represent our film at the Havana Film Festival, it’s the first time he has traveled abroad.
TFV: Do you follow your scripts tightly or is there room for improvisation?
LV: I tried to find a balance between spontaneity and planned preparation. I work very closely with my cowriters on the script, but we must allow for spontaneity; sometimes the landscape, the light, or even the very silence we hear on location, or the chemistry between actors can inspire me to modify a text on the go, but mostly I respect the screenplay as the guiding map for a successful film. One example is that Hatzin’s name was Arturo in the original script, but as we started filming we realized his real name was much more poetic and injected realism into the narrative.
TFV: Your locations in The Box/La Caja tell their own stories, and become another character in the plot.
LV: The Maquilas (textile factories) where Mexican workers end up competing with cheap Chinese textile imports are a difficult setting to portray realistically. They are a world unto themselves. It took us a year to be allowed into one Maquila, and after that only when a factory closed down. We paid the workers three extra days’ wages to film them inside the factory, which in fact became another documentary-like sequence, with real-life actors, while following our screenplay.
TFV: You have won prestigious festival prizes outside of Latin America. How much does it influence your future career? How does it feel to be an Academy Award candidate representing Venezuela?
LV: Festival awards are of course welcome, but should not determine how much support future projects receive. Early development grants and support for screenwriting are crucial in the early stages and help us filmmakers raise the remaining production funds more speedily.
The Oscars need to widen their categories as well. Several Spanish language films have been nominated both in the Best Film category and as Best International Film (Almodóvar, Iñárritu, Del Toro); Oscars need to rethink their rigid categories and be more flexible, even about genres, now that a film can be a combination across genres. We all need to think and work outside the box, beyond national borders and linguistic limitations.
TFV: What is your next project after your trilogy about absent fathers (unwilling or voluntarily so)?
LV: My next film is co-written with Paula Markovitch, and it will be filmed in the US, in English, this time with female protagonists (“women who love passionately”). I find it liberating to be able to choose so widely among genres, locations, actors, and stories.
