The Tenants is showing as part of the Hola Mexico Film Festival at Montalbán Theatre, Regal Cinemas LA Live and LA Plaza De Cultura Y Artes. in Los Angeles on 01 June 2019, and we are honoured to bring you an interview with the director of the film Chava Cartas.
The director Chava Cartas , was born on September 15, 1971 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He studied photography at the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara and film at the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de Los Baños, in Cuba. He began his career as director of photography in the new millennium with the short film Bala Bume Bum!, Which was followed by the feature films Love You Hurts , Dark Cities and San Pancho Athletic , among many others. His career as a director began in 2006 with the films Amor xtremo and Sexo, amor y otros perversiones 2 . In 2010 he made his first series, Mujeres Asesinas , followed by El Equipo , Gossip Girl Acapulco , Los Heroes del Norte and El Mariachi. Despite the good reception on television, Cartas returned to the big screen with Once Again and Rock Marí. Among his latest projects are the feature films Treintona, Soltera y Fantástica , Rosario Tijeras, Tenants, Mirreyes against Godinez and Solos at home, most of them premiered between 2018 and, the others, to be released in 2019. If you are in LA this weekend you can purchase tickets to the film by by clicking here Hello and thank you for doing this Interview. I have been a life-long fan of occult and possession films, so The Tenants (Inquilinos) was a real treat to watch considering many of them can be very similar. Watching horror from a different cultural lens always makes me smile because it can only further enrich the genre. As a Mexican American woman, I actively seek out these films. What drew you to this particular project? The script came to me when the producer, who I was working with preparing the film “Trientona Soltera y Fantástica”, calls me to tell me he has a great script for a horror film. To be honest, it is a very difficult genre and even more so if you don’t have a big budget to resolve all of the VFX and FX needs so my first reaction was that of horror but when I read the script I thought it was fascinating how the writers managed to tell the story, to talk about our Latin-American beliefs—one way or another there are topics that always surrounds us. In our local markets for example, you can find all types of witchcraft and “remedies or potions”, it is part of our folklore and a part that I could dare to take to the big screen. The creepiest parts for me were the bloody saints and scenes of ritual. That opening scene sets the viewer up for a very sinister story. What was your approach to filming this? Do you have any experience with Santeria? After doing a lot of research about Santeria, the saints came to play a part in the film because the base of many of their rituals was that they had to dress them up so that they could worship them, this was the common thread in all of the different practices of Santeria. One of the most important ingredients in the film was the location, an additional character in the story. I found the “vencidad” or neighborhood in Guadalajara and that is why I decided to film there, and it definitely was visually a very sinister location. Did you do any research into Santeria rituals before filming? Of course, doing research was essential because up to that point I had no direct contact with “Santeros” even though these are topics that are always present in our culture. I made it my homework to get close to the “santeros” so that I could learn and dive into their beliefs to make sure we were always portraying their beliefs in a respectful way. There are very sensitive topics that personally I don’t follow but have utmost RESPECT for. You have a wide spectrum of genres under your belt. What draws you to horror? As a filmmaker, I am more passionate about being a storyteller regardless of the genre, if a script captivates me and I know that I can responsibly talk about the theme, I film it. If the story is a horror film, well I’ll film that genre, if the story is an action film then I will be making an action film. I have a firm conviction that we should be storytellers not tellers of a certain genre. Favourite horror film and why? SINISTER (2012) Scott Derrickson This is a great example of how you combine reality with the supernatural. This story had great influence on my decision to film INQUILINOS. I felt this had dashes of The Entity and Rosemary’s Baby. Were either of these influences? Neither of them, my biggest influence was SINISTER that I believe has a very similar structure to my film. The film is set in Guadalajara and this is where you are from. Did you have ideas in mind when it came to filming locations? I loved the Santeria market scene. During my childhood my brothers and I would go to the local markets and we were always scared of walking down the halls that had witchcraft, where they sold the “remedies or potions.” Also talking to Tato Cartas, my brother and production designer of all my projects, we recalled all these moments we lived when we lived in Guadalajara and it just seemed like the best place to tell this story. Take the story out of the big city and tell it form a small city—one of the scenes that I like the most is that one shot in a market. Tato was able to recreate those halls that we were so scary. We were not allowed to film in any real market because of the superstitions people have about this so Tato had to create the entire market from scratch! Any upcoming horror projects? I am about start filming a very funny story alongside a great Mexican producer, Francisco Gonzales Compean and all I can tell you for now is the name of the film, but I think you will get the theme and the genre from the name…MEXZOMBIES Thank you again for the interview. I look forward to spreading the word about The Tenants. Thank you for your interest in my work. I really appreciate it. check out V. CastrO's other reviews and interviews from the Hola mexico Film Festival by clicking on the links below
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