1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

My mom and I moved from Peru to the Netherlands when I was a kid. She brought these mini DV cameras home from art school and I started playing around with them. From then on it was always something I enjoyed doing and it very gradually grew into an art practice over the years, so it’s kind of hard to pinpoint one key moment where I got into it. Rather, it feels like something that’s always been part of me. For my BA, I studied at Amsterdam University College where I majored in Film and Philosophy. During this time I made a couple of small short films where I feel like I began to find my artistic voice. 

2) What was the initial idea and how did it evolve from there?

The week I graduated from university friends of mine got kicked out of a building called ‘VOORWAARTS’. It was a place where there was space to organise events, collaborate on creative projects and generally do whatever we wanted without being crippled by the increasingly exorbitant rent prices in our hometown of Amsterdam. Losing this space prompted all these questions about belonging, urban renewal, and the survival of counterculture – which we wanted to explore in a film loosely based on the actual last party of the real ‘VOORWAARTS’ building.

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And generally what part of the creative process do you enjoy the most?

At that point we didn’t have much experience or name recognition in the world of Dutch professional film so we had to work really hard to get the project off the ground. My producer and close friend Yannesh Meijman was really instrumental in pulling us through that process whilst conceptually developing the script with me. Personally, it definitely was a challenge to find the confidence to be in a charge of a professional set, having only done small, DIY projects before. My favourite part of the creative process is probably collaborating and bringing people together. For this project we wanted to create a community both on-screen and off-screen so we worked together with local musicians, artists and activists, whose unique input was essential in bringing the space in the film to life.

 4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

There’s a bunch of really interesting young Dutch filmmakers whose work showed me that Dutch films don’t have to be stuck-up or cliché but can actually be really unique and experimental. One of them is Ena Sendijarevic who came out with a great debut feature last year called “Take me somewhere nice”. It’s a really playful yet poignant coming-of-age film about a Dutch-Bosnian girl who goes back to Bosnia to visit her sick Dad. It's shot in a really meticulous and stylised way which can be quite alienating at times but for me also really captures the experience of being in-between cultures. It features a phenomenal performance by young actress Sara Luna Zorić, who I had the pleasure of working with last month.

5) What’s next for you?

Next to the short film, Radio Voorwaarts became a platform that showcases underground arts & music, so despite the film being finished its spirit and community continues through the events we organise. I’m currently also an MA Moving Image student at Sandberg Instituut so I’m developing new experimental and fiction projects in that context. Last month I shot a teaser for an upcoming film about two teenage boys who spend their last summer together in their old neighbourhood before one of them is forced to move away. I’m in the midst of post-production for that but hopefully it will get an online release soon. 

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