Unspoken Cinema

HermyBerg : First I want to say thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Kunal. This is a wonderful opportunity. Kunal Mehra : Pleasure's mine. Glad that it all worked out. HermyBerg : I wanted to start by saying I think you made a really excellent film here. A film I hope others will be able to see soon. Kunal Mehra : Thanks! It's always nice to meet people who took a liking to the film. HermyBerg : First I want to start broadly with how you found your lead actor Josh Boyle . Kunal Mehra : Craigslist is the word. HermyBerg : Ha! Kunal Mehra : I had put up audition calls for pretty much everything - cast/crew/catering/producer - on CL and believe it or not, found pretty much 95% of the cast/crew on there. HermyBerg : That's interesting. Kunal Mehra : It took me a while to find the character for Philippe, though. I had it narrowed down to 3 actors and I spent quite a lot of time just informally chatting with them, trying to get a sense of how their persona in re...

The Wind Blows Where It Will directed by Portland, Oregon, based director Kunal Mehra is rigidly constructed film, running slightly over three-hours, which demands the viewer’s attention. Holding fastidiously to a Bressonian austereness and its own wrought-out languidness TWBWIW , in the end, reaches a deep and resonant poignancy. It’s a remarkably simple story. Philippe, a solitary young man, works in a small office selling blinds. He’s in a long distance relationship with Jeanne. She comes for a visit and tells Philippe she wants to breakup; no real explanation is given. Thus Philippe, already a quiet soul, must learn to live truly on his own; their rupture serving as an impetus to his silent and spiritual unraveling. In essence TWBWIW is a intense character study and Mehra with monk-like patience trains his camera on the recondite Philippe excavating his internal struggle like a surgeon. The world Philippe inhabits is extremely minimal with a distinctive pace and mood. Mehra’s st...

At The Evening Class , Michael Guillen interviews a film student from Berkeley, Matt Losada, and about his non-conventional film, Sin Título (2007). They talk about so-called "boring" films: Michael Guillén: In the Q&A after the program you spoke a bit about being fond of "boring" films; what are you referencing in particular? Matt Losada: I meant "boring" in quotes, of course. It's a matter of expectations, like when you tell someone they just have to see a certain film, then sometimes afterward they avoid mentioning it, and if you ask about it they say it was slow or boring. If they're used to lots of camera movement, lots of cutting, dense narration, they'll find certain films boring. I think this is what Pedro Costa meant when he said how lots of commercial films need to create "energy" where sometimes there is none. So I suppose I might have been apologizing for my piece not being like that. But I think that "boring...