A conversation with three Miami filmmakers by Hans Morgenstern
FFCC member Hans Morgenstern spoke with Carla Forte, Jillian Mayer and Monica Peña, three distinctive voices that are putting Miami’s independent film scene on the global map, in the Miami New Times. All three Miami-based filmmakers are the subjects of a retrospective at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, which begins this Friday and culminates in a conversation with them led by Scott Macaulay, editor of Filmmaker Magazine.
It’s easy to say Miami is a weird city. Its reputation for freakishness is so well known, it seems to have been co-opted by cities like New York and Los Angeles. A shark on public transit? Miami had it first (and bigger). It doesn’t matter what L.A. says, Miami is the true capital of Latin America. The creativity that comes out of this city is raw, interesting, and wildly creative — and film is lately becoming a big part of that art scene.
That last detail is not lost on Dana Keith, the director of the Miami Beach Cinematheque, who has dedicated the latest in his Knight Foundation-sponsored film talk series to three of Miami’s most intriguing filmmakers with very distinctive voices. “I have been following these three women as filmmakers for several years now,” says Keith, “and they represent the most interesting and creative art coming from Miami as opposed to the safe and conventional. They all take risks in their own way, something I admire very much, [and they are] keeping the art of cinema alive in inventive ways with three very individual points of view.”
Carla Forte is a dancer and documentary filmmaker with a poetic activist bent for both human and animal rights. Jillian Mayer is an artist/actress/filmmaker with a humorous, and sometimes poignant, take on the relationship between identity and technology. Finally, Monica Peña is a filmmaker with an interest in the blurry border between naturalism and surrealism.
(Read the rest at Miami New Times)
Hans also published individual profiles on each filmmaker at his blog Independent Ethos. Read those by jumping through their names below:
