“Czar Of Make Believe” was a personal film: I wrote, shot and cut it. But there was also a real group effort behind me. I could not have made “Czar” without that constant loving support. This film was my own film school, an experiment in search of a way to make movies, a “fly on the wall” imaginary documentary about a splinter of the american dream. I learned how many hours, tools, resources and consultants a young film-maker (I was 27) needs in order to turn a castle of cards into a transformational film, the one that changes your whole relationship with the art and science of making movies.

Angels and angels danced on pins for me as the money ran out and deadlines

I got generous help from my peers Mark Borchardt (American Movie) and Kirill Mikhanovsky (“Dreams of Fish”). I shared the ARRI-SR2 camera with Chris Smith (who was shooting American Movie with Sarah Price). And Dick Blau was my mentor and his enthusiasm for every new solution I played with kept me going. He told me “your little film will make you quite famous.” The russian composer Kostia contributed the soundtrack after asking, at a test screening, if he could have the (unpaid) job. Fotokem Lab in Burbank gave me rock-bottom color correction, printing rates and screening rooms. There were tens of people helping “Czar Of Make Believe” get made over 24 months.

At a festival in Siena, Italy a woman asked me: “This is such a personal film. Who did you make it for?” I had never thought about that. I had made the film so I could get myself lost in it. “I made it for you”  I said. The Q&A session  was moved into a private room after so many questions about my process were asked. It lasted almost 2 hours, in the end. My first workshop, I guess.   

“Where will the intelligence and kindness come from that can save us”?
Stephen Siciliano

This is Youth Cinema, something to look forward to.

In a mediated culture, we could not live without movies. Not the stars and celebrity bit, btu rather movies that reconnect us to what is. Stories that do so by exploring what ifs.

Here’s more specs:

I am addicted to a good story that makes my POV matter, mixed-in with life as it manifests itself, never still, always changing.

I want to slalom thru characters entangled with each other, rediscover relationships at work, groove on the one of a kind experiences and crack together the surface of indifference, apathy, and self-destructiveness.

I am hungry for the hyper-focus of a limited story-movie world with characters we can get to know. Are three film characters better than 300 facebook friends?