Mario Makes a Movie
(Stills)
2004 11 min 36 sec Color Original on Super 8 and 8 mm Photographed in 1987
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach: Cello Suites No.1, No.4
Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Monologe, Photopsis, Sonata for Cello Solo
George Gershwin: Summertime
Based on the short story Mario Makes a Movie by Roger Deutsch published in Raindance Film Magazine, Volume 12.1 SPRING/SUMMER 2004
San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival 05 (Juror’s Choice)
Black Maria Film Festival 05 (Juror’s Citation)
Dances With Films (LA) 04
CinemaTexas 04
Silver Lake Film Festival (LA) 04
Raindance Film Festival (London) 04
Tulsa Overground Film Festival 04
Ann Arbor Film Festival 05
Antimatter Underground Film Festival (Victoria, Canada) 05
Prends ça court! (Montreal) 05
Cinequest (San Jose) 06
Videoex (Zurich) 06
Plymouth Independent Film Festival 06
San Francisco International Festival of Short Films 06
Rooftop Films (NY) 06
Exis (Seoul) 06
Experiments in Cinema V 2.0 (Albuquerque) 07
San Francisco Cinematheque 07
Iowa City Experimental Film Festival 07
Other Cinema (San Francisco) 07
Les Inattendus (Lyon, France) 08
Space for Imagination (Bejing) 08
Sioux City Arts Center (Iowa) 08
Anthology Film Archives 14
“The pieces should seem familiar. A noble but ne'er-do-well teacher. Students pulled from the last photos of Diane Arbus. Rustic 8mm aesthetics. But instead of assembling these pieces into a neatly wrapped gift from the Hallmark store, Deutsch sets them ablaze through subtle, clever turns of narration. Mario Makes a Movie is an indictment of filmmaking and filmmakers, which spares neither subject, nor author, nor audience. And while no one is beyond contempt, the creative process still seems to offer some relief, even in the hands of the hopeless.”
Jason Cortlund, CinemaTexas
“From the first frames – a series of portraits of adults with special needs - we engage in this moving, emotionally dense human drama. The integration of text, image, music, and heartfelt dialogue is masterfully constructed as we navigate between issues of truth, beauty, reality and intuitive image-making. Mario’s images are often painfully beautiful, and the closing sequence of family footage is simultaneously illuminating, troubling, and deeply touching.”
Black Maria Film Festival
“In this curious mix of found footage, fact and fiction, Roger Deutsch weaves a profound and moving tale of guilt and miscommunication, redemption and recovery.
Rooftop Films
Mario Makes a Movie sums up filmmaking with the line: "I thought you might be interested to see something I saw."
Hiya Swanhuyser San Francisco Weekly