Sundance is the most prestigious film festival in the world,” says Filipino-American filmmaker Anthony Diaz V, who is set to break out with Break, his Sundance-bound, full-length feature film debut as writer-director-actor. If your goal is for your film to get global recognition, hit for
Sundance. Also, most film buyers and distributors attend Sundance more than any other international film festival. If accepted into Sundance, it’s the closest to you hitting a home run.
Break hits Manila on November 19, which is its second stop in Asia before the film goes to Sundance and emerge as its future film maverick. Break had a successful private screening in Tokyo with over 500 people last April.
“If your goal is for your film to get global recognition, hit for Sundance. Also, most film buyers and distributors attend Sundance more than any other international film festival. If accepted into Sundance, it’s the closest to you hitting a home run,” Anthony explains.
Movies have always played a major role in Anthony’s life, from his childhood to his years at the University of Las Vegas Film School (UNLV). He graduated with high honors with a Bachelor’s Degree in Film at age 20, making him the youngest graduate in the program’s history.
His passion for film guided him as he embarked on his earliest short films that include Delusion, which was showcased at the UNLV Film Festival, and Forgotten Heroes, a film about the effects of the war in Afghanistan to a US military family. Forgotten Heroes was warmly received and has played at various movie festivals. It is being considered for a showing at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
“My first major influence was Robert Rodriguez,” Anthony identifies that exclusive circle, which also counts as members two directors. The other helmer he looks up to is Hollywood actor and director Robert Redford, who won an Oscar for helming Ordinary People and the maverick who signaled Sundance.
“The movement he created in the indie movie scene was amazing at that time. He proved that it wasn’t impossible to make a movie if you had the desire and the creativity and, quite frankly, the ignorance of not knowing it can’t be done. My recent favorite is Ben Affleck (Argo & Gone Girl) who writes, directs and acts in the project’s he produces,” he adds.
Filmmaking is a tedious process whose end results are always most rewarding. In most cases, a film’s genesis begins with the spark of an idea; what follows after is a whole new different story. Break, says Anthony, was a breeze to write. It took him two months, on and off, to finish the movie’s draft. “What really took time was dialing it in with the details.”
Break is a first-of-its-kind Hollywood style movie shot entirely in Japan with Japanese actors speaking both English and Japanese. That naturally posed a problem.
“Honestly, the biggest challenge was the language barrier, where things could get lost in translation,” he explains. “It took six months in language and intonation prep before we started to roll cameras. Also, trying to give my guidance as a director to the actors through a translator sometimes made me want to pull my hair out. It was physically and emotionally exhausting at times, but I would never trade the experience for anything.”
Anthony, as a kid, always had a crazy imagination and was raised watching gritty and perplexing classics like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, El Mariachi and The Shawshank Redemption, to name a few.
Invariably, he would act like a character from a film after just watching it and be on that for a week straight before moving on to the next character of a movie. On the side, he also did normal things kids his age engaged in like video games and sports.
Anthony feels that Break is the perfect vehicle for his full-length feature debut. Mixing elements of crime, drama, love story and action, Anthony stars and directs from a script he also wrote under his own production company called Kaizen Studios. With his gym-honed physique, killer smile, arresting screen presence and seductive alto, Anthony slips into the lead role of Johnny with ease.
Johnny is a young Japanese-American who gets involved with Tokyo’s underworld elements as he deals with the weight of being an outsider trying to fit into Japanese society. With Kaede as lead actress, the film’s the storytelling is gripping and technical aspects are polished, managing to draw one into this alienated young man’s world and outsider psyche.
Go to thebreakmovie.com or visit the Kaizen Studios FB page @Facebook.com/KaizenStudios to find out more about “Break.”
ANSWER THE HIV SURVEY. The University of the Philippines Manila in collaboration with researchers from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine of United Kingdom was awarded a research grant after a rigid competition to improve the effectiveness of HIV Testing and Counseling (HTC) in the Philippines.
It will pilot an innovative tool in the form of a “serious gaming” application available for both Android and iOS operating system to increase the number of MSMs getting tested and knowing their HIV status.
The increasing number of HIV/AIDS cases in the Philippines is becoming an alarming public health dilemma with almost 25 new cases diagnosed every day. According to observation by the Department of Health, high risk groups, especially Men having Sex with Men (MSM), tend not to come forward for testing, and the two-week time period between testing and diagnosis in the current system leads to few returns for treatment and care.
This is an important contributing factor to the Philippines having the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world. There is a clear need to address delays the current diagnosis system and pilot targeted interventions to improve uptake of HIV testing and counselling services among high risk groups.
“The prevalence is going up... hopefully through this we can increase the testing through gaming,” Dr. Emmanuel Baja, principal investigator of the project, says in an interview.
The project is also supported by the HIV/STI Prevention Program of the Department of Health under the leadership of Dr. Jose Gerard Belimac.
The game will make use of information gathered from the series of interviews conducted and accomplishment of survey questionnaires. To the gays and transgenders who would want to participate in the survey, there will be a link available in social networking sites like Planet Romeo, Grindr at Growlr that will redirect you to the survey platform.
All information captured from the survey will be treated as confidential thus it is highly encouraged to answer the survey with utmost honesty.
Again, the LGBT community is encouraged to support this cause.