Award-winning Bruin films find spot in Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival
(Left to right) Cy Carter, Charlie Day, Melanie Lynskey, Mo Perkins and Mary Elizabeth Ellis work on set of “A Quiet Little Marriage.” The film was written and directed by Perkins and coproduced by Angela Sostre and Tamara Maloney. The film will screen at this year’s Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival.
By Kimberley Wong
Nov. 4, 2009 9:00 p.m.
Being a woman in the film industry may have its challenges. However, five female Bruins prove to be leading ladies as they showcase their award-winning films at the 10th anniversary of the Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival.
Alumnae Mo Perkins, Tamara Maloney, Angela Sostre and Alexandra Fisher, as well as Angela O’Sullivan, a current graduate student in production with an emphasis in directing, will present their works at the nearby festival. Running Nov. 5 – 8, it will debut more UCLA alumni films than those of any other school.
Getting their respective films into the festival is a product of the filmmakers’ tools of the trade, working with little resources to yield large results.
For Perkins, solid preparation and flexibility have gone a long way.
Her writing and directorial debut, “A Quiet Little Marriage,” follows a fictional newlywed couple and chronicles the challenges of a new marriage. Her own challenge of getting the film around the festival circuit while she was pregnant proved difficult, but with the help of fellow Bruins Maloney and Sostre on the film, she managed to bring both babies into the world.
Just as marriage is an act of faith, Perkins said that making the film with a small budget was a risk, but her UCLA lessons on resourcefulness turned things around for the cast and crew.
“UCLA prepared me for how to make movies and collaborate. That, at the end of the day, is so valuable: fine-tuning, making films come together and manifesting things with very little resources,” Perkins said.
Perkins brought on crew members from UCLA to make the film. Her crew included producers and fellow graduate school film partners, Maloney and Sostre.
“We’ve been friends for a really long time, worked on each other’s projects in undergrad and grad (school) ““ it was a natural collaboration,” Maloney said.
Maloney, who will also be featured at the festival for her work in the film “Who Needs Sleep?,” agrees with Perkins’ advice that less can be more, especially in light of the current economic crisis.
“I think that instead of making some sort of fancy film with a lot of money, think about it again and try to simplify your story and tell something small, because I think small stories tell our voices.
“Our film is a perfect example of that: It’s a small film we financed on a very modest budget, but the outcome was huge,” Maloney said.
Perkins’ “A Quiet Little Marriage” won the Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival and was picked up by IFC, a prestigious independent film distribution company. She shot the film in a dead 15-day run and transformed her apartment into a production space, crew hangout and soundstage.
“Living in your film and shooting at that rate was pretty insane, but we made it work for us with the experience (from) making films at UCLA. With no money and time, the only thing you have going for you is preparation, so I prepared with my actors, wrote the script and rehearsed it for about a year … to get what we wanted,” Perkins said.
Sostre added that, on top of preparation for the film, preparation for the industry in terms of broadening one’s skills ““ for example, editing, cinematography, sound or producing ““ are integral to any film career.
“For Mo, it was writing; she really developed that. And Tamara was a great editor and producer, so she brought those skills to the table,” Sostre said.
Fisher said her experience at UCLA has been key in her career.
“Being in a course like UCLA’s MFA program gives you a platform where you can try things out and it’s safe to fail, to screw up ““ and you learn an enormous amount from your mistakes. It’s also a place where you can take risks, where some of them work and some of them don’t,” Fisher said.
Her film “Desert Wedding” won the Directors Guild of America’s Student Film Award and the Angelus Student Film Festival’s Audience Impact Award.
Fisher, a self-described “control-freak,” said that flexibility applies to both a film career and life.
“In L.A., I couldn’t find any work so I thought I’d … do something different, which is working to my benefit,” Fisher said.
After graduating, Fisher decided to move to Switzerland and found jobs in commercial film and advertising.
“People shouldn’t be afraid to go different routes. Sometimes you can’t take a direct route to get to that point, and one shouldn’t be afraid to take up those opportunities,” Fisher said.
Similarly, Perkins advises filmmakers to continue creating and working regardless of whether or not they land a job.
“Everyone will tell you that there’s no set path to making movies; it’s not like becoming a doctor. Part of our inspiration for making (“A Quiet Little Marriage”) was that we really wanted to create it no matter what,” Perkins said.
Maloney mentioned the challenge that women face and said she hopes that more women will get into creative positions to greenlight their films.
“It’s remarkable that, out of all the many women who I’ve graduated with, there have been less than 10 or so women who have directed a film out of the five years that I was at UCLA. … I hope that that number changes,” Maloney said.
