On Being A Filmmaker
Let's go straight to the point: I love making movies: low-budget / no-budget movies, whatever kind of movie I can make.
Many film critics say that my movies are worthless. Frank Capra complained about the American film critics in his autobiography "The Name Above The Title." I explain my relationwship with the Peruvian film critics in my own unpublished autobiography "Rest And Make Yourself Rich," Anyway, you should know that they (the Peruvian film critics) might be right: my movies are not mainstream products or even highly successful (meaning "profitable") independent movies. Even though the scholar Jeffrey Middents has written that I am "Peru's only bona fide exploitation film specialist" the truth is that the Peruvian reality is different than the American one and the title "exploitation film specialist" might not make much sense. I think that one of my Peruvian colleagues, Lucho Llosa (aka Luis Llosa Urquidi), truly deserves the title: he worked for the American market collaborating with Roger Corman in the 80s and later he directed a couple of blockbusters: "The Specialist" and "Anaconda." Thus, he worked with James Woods, Sharon Stone, Sylvester Stallone, J Lo, Eric Roberts, Rod Steiger, Tom Berenger, Billy Zane, Bill Butler, and other well known American actors and actresses and technicians. He was directing big-budget exploitation movies in Hollywood!
Well, the case of Lucho Llosa is not my case. Mine is a case of another kind.
These days I work in Puno (Peruvian territory next to Bolivia) and Bolivia. My most recent movie, my autobiography, was shot in Lima (the Peruvian capital) but I could not find a distributor eager to deal with it. Thus, I traveled to Puno in order to rent a theater, to promote and exhibit the movie all by myself. This is the way I survive. This is the way I do what I like. This is the way I devote my life to satisfy my addiction: being a filmmaker.
