Three the hard way
Time Out New York Project: Issue #704, March 26-April 1, 2009
Author’s note: This is my contribution to a “New Directors/New Films” feature co-written with my colleagues David Fear and Joshua Rothkopf. The full article is viewable as a PDF, linked below.
Enrique Rivero, Parque Vía
The hard sell: The agoraphobic caretaker of a Mexico City mansion is faced with eviction.
The budget: $500,000.
The struggle: “It’s very interesting how the changes in the economy affected my movie. It was financed thanks to a new law in Mexico that allows film companies to deduct taxes. This way of producing films gave me the total freedom to do whatever I wanted (limited, of course, by a low budget). But now that the time has come to sell the movie, we are in the middle of a huge crisis, so it is going to be very difficult. I never thought that my movie was going to be a great success, but after all the festivals and recognitions, I found out that I still won’t make a profit off of it. But since it [turned out how I imagined], it makes me very happy. The profit is the making itself. I don’t know how the crisis is going to affect me, or the movie industry. Things have to change in the world and in the movie industry as well, but of course there are barriers to doing so. In Mexico, it seems that these barriers are a motivation to do things differently. We’ll probably have to look for a different kind of production, from finance to exhibition, and this will only help cinema to advance and regenerate. That is my opinion. In a few years, I’ll probably say the opposite.”
