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The Provocative Santi and Mascara by Don Schwartz
Guido Santi and Tina Mascara in front of the LA Laemmle Royal theater showing their film 'Monk With A Camera'. photo: courtesy T. Mascara/G. Santi
GUIDO SANTI AND TINA MASCARA
were already accomplished filmmakers when they met in their adopted home town of Los Angeles. They partnered their filmmaking efforts, and have produced two strong and successful documentary films. It is clear that there will be much more to come from this highly talented couple—including narrative films.
In addition to being charming and delightful as individuals, and as a couple, they exude the care and conscience of serious, talented filmmakers.
Their first film together, “Chris and Don”, tells the story of the three-decade love between author Christopher Isherwood and painter Don Bachardy. The recently released “Monk with a Camera” follows Nicholas Vreeland who abandoned his high life in the upper strata of Western society to become a Tibetan monk.
"Monk With A Camera" was very well received when it opened in December in New York City at the Lincoln Center Film Society, selling out there three times. Since then, it has played in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Rafael, Santa Fe and many more cities.
"We are still very much involved in the grassroots campaign for the film, trying to reach out to communities interested in photography, Buddhism and more," Mascara wrote me recently.
"We hope to build enough word-of-mouth to continue bringing people to the theaters and to pave the road for when the film will be available in other formats and venues."
Mascara was born and raised in Monongah, West Virginia. At sixteen she moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to study photography at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. She graduated with a B.A. in photography.
Santi was born in Genoa, Italy. He has a “Laurea” (an Italian bachelors) in philosophy from the University of Urbino, outside Rome. After moving to Los Angeles Santi attended the University of Southern California, where he graduated with an M.A. in Film Production and Television.
I spoke with the two filmmakers at their Los Angeles home.
Scene from the Santi/Mascara film 'Monk With A Camera'. photo: courtesy T. Mascara/G. Santi
CineSource:Tina, what drew you from the east coast to the west?
Guido: [interrupting] Hollywood. [both laugh]
Tina: I grew up in a very small town, and I knew from early on that I wanted to leave. I didn’t really feel like I fit in, even though I go back often and see my family. And Pittsburgh wasn’t far enough away from home.
I tried New York. New York is very exciting—still to me—and then I went to Los Angeles. It was just easier for me to just fit in and to adapt, and to make my home here.
These adventures through cities, were you practicing as a professional photographer?
I was trying to be, a little bit, but I was also waitressing. And then I met a director, and he encouraged me to go to film school at Los Angeles City College which I did. But even before completing the degree there, I went and made my first feature, “Jacklight”.
Did you complete that program?
No, I left before completing it.
And, you’ve been making films ever since.
Yeah. Not as often as I’d like, but as often as I could. I made two narrative features before meeting Guido, and since then we’ve done two documentary features.
How did you and Guido meet?
You know, Guido’s Italian, but he’s been living in Los Angeles for many years. We were originally introduced by friends of ours. They knew us mutually, and one night they had us to their house for dinner. We became acquainted with each other.
And then we would start running into each other because we lived within close proximity. We would always run into each other at the [legendary] farmers market, and eventually we decided to hook up, and we started dating. And then we started combining our efforts as filmmakers.
At that time, Guido had met the subject of our first documentary, Don Bachardy, and he was trying to make that film. I was really excited because Don is so amazing.
'Nicky' with his teacher, Kyongla Rinpoche, and the Dalai Lama at the time of Vreeland's 'investiture' as Abbott of the Rato Dratsang monastery. photo: courtesy T. Mascara/G. Santi
Don is the long-time partner of Christopher Isherwood. He’s a very famous portrait artist, and he lives in Santa Monica. I decided to join efforts with Guido, and that was our first film together as co-directors.
I’d like to take a step back, Tina. What drew you to photography?
I was searching for something to do—something that I like. And I liked images. I was coming from an environment that was very sheltered, and small, and I was always looking out, and imagining different worlds, to capture different worlds.
Then I saw an ad on TV about a photography program in Pittsburgh. And from there I decided it wasn’t enough, I wanted to tell stories.
How old were you when you got that impulse to tell stories?
When I was fourteen. I was trying to write short stories which weren’t very exciting. I was telling horror stories about my family, my grandparents. And this opportunity came to go to photography school.
It seems like you discovered your life’s interest early on.
I did. But, you know, it was hard to find myself because I wasn’t surrounded by a lot of art and culture when I was growing up. For me it was a quest to find myself, and to be able to express myself. That’s why photography led me to something else.
Tina Mascara. photo: courtesy T. Mascara/G. Santi
I’m a little jealous. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to be when I grow up. This impulse to tell stories began in your early adolescence.
Yes. Absolutely. People always used to say I live in a dream world.
Well, that’s where artists live.
Yeah. They’d say, ‘Come back to reality. You need to be a nurse.’
No, no. Artists bring the dream world—horrific or beatific—to reality. Guido, it’s your turn. When did you first discover an impulse to tell stories in film?
My interest in film started very early. It started when I was eight or nine with filming my mother at our family vacation with a Super 8 camera. And then, eventually, when I was 14, with my friends, I started to produce short films in Super 8. There is where the passion started. I pursued it.
I was always very committed, and what happened eventually, in my early twenties, I was studying philosophy, I joined a group of young filmmakers who were working for a very important Italian director, Ermanno Olmi.
He won the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, and also the Venice Film Festival, so he has been the recipient of many international awards. He’s still well-known in Italy, not so much abroad. His most famous film is ‘The Tree of the Wooden Clogs’.
And so we were basically assisting him. He had a contract for Italian television, and this I where I got my first real lessons about filmmaking. He is a very inspiring director who learned his craft in the neorealist tradition of Italian cinema.
He taught me how to look carefully at reality and find the poetic inspiration for my work in what is around me. He was also a documentary filmmaker in the early years of his career.
Guido Santi. photo: courtesy T. Mascara/G. Santi
Then, eventually, I directed for Italian television my first short film which was fully produced by Italian TV. And then I got the chance to come to the United States. I always loved American cinema, and this was an opportunity to explore another side of what I love most.
After the USC film school, I decided to stay. It was not an easy decision because I entertained for many years the idea of going back. But I began to do documentaries here, and then I met Tina.
Joining forces provided us with a common goal. It’s not so much about our egos, but about doing the work which we love to do. This also meant that we could support each other emotionally, financially at times. I see brothers, couples, and friends co-directing not only documentaries, but also feature films. It’s much more common now than 50 years ago.
I’m not saying that we will always be working in team, but certainly for certain projects, this has proven to be a successful way to get things done. We complete each other quite well. Tina takes care more of the editing side of production. I do more of the shooting. I like the physical tasks of producing a film. You know, so far, so good.
Where did you get the name of your production company, ‘Asphalt Stars’?
Tina: My second feature was called ‘Asphalt Stars’ — it’s from a line in the movie. These two characters say, ‘We walked on those asphalt stars.’—meaning the stars on Hollywood Boulevard.
I want to talk about your first two features as a couple. Your first feature, ‘Chris and Don’ was released theatrically in 2008. How did you come upon this project?
Guido: The idea started because I was introduced to Don Bachardy. One night he showed me this beautiful 16mm footage that he and Christopher Isherwood shot in the 1950s, as they were travelling around the world—in the company of great artists, writers like E.M. Forster, Somerset Maughm, Igor Stravinsky. All these great personalities.
I was amazed because I realized there was the potential to really make a beautiful story. If you make it a documentary of the past, you have to heavily rely upon archival material; there I had a treasure trove of material that could easily be shaped into a clear narrative.
For about two years I tried to find money to make the project. Raising money, you know, is another big issue in making films. It’s always difficult. But I had met Tina, and Tina knew that I was really trying to find resources, and she simply said, ‘Let’s put it on the credit card, and start shooting.’ So, we partnered, and we started filming with our own resources.
Then, eventually, as often happens in film life, once you commit to something, other things start to come in your way. We found more people willing to help, and the money to complete the film. Tina, now, will tell you more about the creative process.
Thanks. Tina, tell me about the production, how you found distribution, and how the film was received.
As Guido mentioned, we started filming because we had the means to do so. It was about two years to film the movie. Don Bachardy lives in Los Angeles so it was easy enough to film him at his home, but we also had to fly to places like France, Ireland and England to do some of the other filming. And then we started assembling it, editing it together. And then one night James White, who became one of the producers, came in and was able to find money to complete the film.
After that, we put it together, hired really great composers, post-production was done top notch. And we started submitting it to film festivals. We got in the Telluride Film Festival. It launched the film, and from there we got distribution right away through Zeitgeist Films.
How did the film do with Zeitgeist?
It did really, really well. It was a critical success—it was critics pick in almost every major publication. Played all across the United States, New York. It opened in at least a hundred cities.
What was the genesis of ‘Monk with a Camera’?
Tina: By chance we found the story, and it appealed to us. We were working on a narrative film. After we made ‘Chris and Don’ we optioned a novel by Christopher Isherwood, and we were developing it, and we had written a script. One of the characters in the book was a Westerner becoming a Hindu monk. So we were researching on the internet about Westerners who had become monks, and we found this story in the Calcutta, India newspaper about Nicholas Vreeland—a monk in India who was in the process of selling his photographs to rebuild the Rato Dratsang monastery. We looked on the internet as you do with everything these days and found a contact for Nicky Vreeland, and we contacted him. That was the genesis of the film.
We thought it could be a great project. I love documentaries, probably more than I like fiction now, but I want to do both. We thought this could be a great story—it really appealed to me—that this person, from that background, to walk away, and what does is it mean about our material world?
I was just curious about his story. It reminded me of the book ‘Siddhartha’, about this prince who left the West and went to the East to find a more balanced life.
What happened next?
We contacted Nicky, and he said, ‘no’ (laughs). He said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m very flattered, but I don’t want a film about myself because it seems to be the opposite of what I’m trying to do with my life.’ We thought that was the end of that. And then what happened behind the scenes which we didn’t know about, he ended up calling us a few months later, and he said, ‘I’m going to be having a show in Naples, if you want you can come along and film.’
We wanted to jump on it even though we didn’t know whether or not he was agreeing to do the film. He didn’t say that. So we went to Naples because we hadn’t met him. We filmed the show, and we followed him around, and we got to know him a little bit. And still we didn’t know if he had given us permission.
We were anxious to jump on a new project. We thought it was a great story, but we were frustrated at the end. We thought, ‘We had just come here to film this guy, and we don’t even know if we have a documentary.’ We went back to the United States, and then we met with him again in New York, and he gave us official permission.
And what we didn’t know is that his teacher, Khyongla Rinpoche—who’s in the movie—he said to Nicky, ‘you must do the film.’ And then Nicky called the Dalai Lama’s office, and they also encouraged him to do it. So he got permission to do it, and that’s how we were able to make the movie. They thought it would be good for the world to see this film.
Anything else you want to say about the production and the release?
Guido: Regarding the production, we shot over the course of three years. The difficult part of the film was the fact that Nicky’s time was limited, and we had to be ready to take off, go to India, or to wherever he was, at the drop of a hat. We had a great, loyal group of talented professionals who worked for free. They were passionate about the film, and willing to commit to it.
We went several times to India, to Europe, New York several times. We ended up finishing the film about a year ago, in the summer of 2013. We applied to several festivals, and we got to this very important festival, possibly the greatest documentary festival in the world, IDFA, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. We had a fantastic run at IDFA, they added extra shows because our first screening sold out, which was an 800 seat theater.
And then we got a few offers from distribution companies, and we went with Kino Lorber which took the project last May, and released it just a few weeks ago. We had our opening in New York City, at the Film Society of the Lincoln Center. We had a fantastic turnout of people.
This is why we make films. We want people to see them. It’s difficult to get people to see documentaries—especially in the theaters. We sold out three shows. They had to put us up in a larger theater at the Lincoln Center.
Last week the film was moved to the Cinema Village in New York City, and we just learned due to the high demand for the film, they’re going to extend its run an extra week. And so we hope that this trend will continue here, too. The film opens in Los Angeles next week, on the twelfth of December. Nicholas Vreeland will be here for the opening. And he will be participating in three Q&As.
What’s on the horizon for your two?
Guido: Well, we are trying to see if we can reach over to narrative filmmaking. We have recently completed a script that we’re interested in producing this year. It’s a drama based on a book we optioned. But we’re also exploring other documentary ideas—a documentary about immigration, with a particular approach to it, and other ideas. But we need to find a story that we know—more or less, where we’re heading.
Don Schwartz is an actor, writer and blogger on all things documentary, and can be seen here or reached .Posted on Jan 18, 2015 - 01:20 AM