THE BOBBY DIAMONDS STORY North American Premiere at The Toronto Smartphone Film Festival

 

                     Robert Aaron Mitchell on the red carpet at The Toronto Smartphone Film Festival 

                    With Executive Producer Sarah Dillard Mitchell

                                                    Director Robert Aaron Mitchell

Here is the post-screening Q&A

THE BOBBY DIAMONDS STORY Wins Best Short Documentary at the Tokyo International Short Film Festival

 

 

I am thrilled to announce that The Bobby Diamonds Story has won Best Short Documentary at the Tokyo International Short Film Festival. Yesterday I received the award. Click HERE for an interview I did with the Tokyo International Film Festival. 

THE BOBBY DIAMONDS STORY - Poster Reveal and Interview with Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

The Bobby Diamonds Story now has a poster. The poster reflects the duality of a poker player as well as the duality of the story the documentary unfolds. The film also recently won Best Documentary Short at the Tokyo International Short Film Festival joining the film's win at the Venice Fullshot Film Festival.

Director and writer Robert Aaron Mitchell also recently did an interview about The Bobby Diamonds Story and film making in general. You can find that interview HERE The film's iMDB page is HERE 

Here is the trailer once again:

JOHN BOORMAN: CONCLUSIONS. Some Thoughts Upon Reading

                                Mike Lane, Sarah Mitchell, John Boorman & Robert Mitchell
                                         The Lilly Library Indiana University Oct. 27th, 2016

 “In old age, words escape me. If I wait patiently, they float up, and I recapture them. If that fails, I am obligated to go down to the cellar, where they languish, and drag them back up. I note that water is starting into the cellar. I fear that some words will drown and be lost for ever. The quest for harmony of word and image has been my life. Sight loss is making the world look like Turners. While I still can, I hasten to testify.” John Boorman

One begins to read a book on John Boorman to further gain insight into the thoughts of a unique filmmaker who directed films such as Zardoz, Point Blank, Excalibur, Deliverance. To this end the book will satisfy those looking for further insight and kernels of more film knowledge. Such as Lee Marvin agreed to make Point Blank on the condition that they throw out the existing script and start anew. As well as how it was David Lean who unknowingly saved Point Blank and Mr. Boorman's first American feature film from being stopped before production was set to begin.

The book begins with the heading TYPEWRITER and Mr. Boorman writes of his teacher and mentor John Maquire who encouraged the sixteen year old to pursue becoming a writer. John's mother then bought him a used typewriter. "where I sat every night tapping away with two fingers, a bottle of Tipp-Ex at hand" He would go on to have some success publishing some short stories. This yearning for story telling would soon find another way of expression and become the major driving pursuit of John Boorman's life.

In the opening pages we read about when John begin to make movies on Super 8 with his school friend Barry Vince."This was our fantasy. Film-making was a distant dream and occupied by people who went to Oxford." These pages took me back to my high school days and making films with my friend John Harvey and our VHS cameras. Running around our hometown as gangsters and suffering artists. Our movies were first inspired by John Woo, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. As we continued our films became more personal and more art-house with our love for grindhouse still embedded in our short films.

A notable early passage where Mr. Boorman speaks about beginning to make the film The Emerald Forrest and living with indigenous people of the Xingu region of the Amazon rain forrest and how the tribe sees themselves as part of the greater whole rather than seperate beings and how our fixation on individuality can be alienating. As I reading through these particular pages I was thinking of the current moment of time we are all sharing amidst the spread of COVID-19. Of the need to collectively wear masks in public that do not necessarily protect us but to protect the other people we will come into contact with. Mr. Boorman takes this philosophy and applies it to making a film. "However clear your vision , you cannot make a movie on your own. You need a tribe. As a director you struggle to communicate to the cast and crew the essential nature of the film you are making. If things go well , there comes a magical moment when they 'get' what you are trying to achieve. From that moment, the film makes itself.' I was thinking of how the film-making process will be altered as time moves forward in the new era of the cornavirus Another exceptionally strong section for me personally was when Mr. Boorman takes us through his personal film school. Sections on writing, rehearsals with actors, another section on shot selection which will be a section I revisit often.

As I read Conclusions there were many times I had the feeling as though I was sitting by a fireplace in Wicklow Hills, Ireland across from Mr. Boorman as we spent an evening drinking scotch as I listened to his stories of film-making, life and friendships and family as well as his affinity for water and trees. As I was nearing the end of the book it really felt as though I was privy to a very private and intimate conversation with a person who is very much more than the films that brought me to this book. Mr. Boorman is clearly preparing for the end of a life lived. He has outlived many of his film-making contemporaries as well as losing friends and family. His words convey a sense of peace as well as preparing for death. He is still very much driven by imagination and curiosity of our shared existence and the planet we currently call home. As I read the last words of Conclusions there is a hint of regret in Mr. Boorman's words that so much of his time was spent in the pursuit of making films. Ultimately it is the life we have lived which is of utmost importance. Life is about the friends and family the precede us to the other side and the friends and family we leave behind. May our stories live well after us.

GEORGE A. ROMERO - The Toronto World Premiere & Welcome Ceremony Videos

Robert Mitchell with George A. Romero at Mr. Romero's welcome ceremony as a Canadian citizen. September 12th, 2009. The inscription on the memento of the occasion was written by me and reads: "In recognition of the Canadian citizenship of George A. Romero , his status as a Torontonian and his efforts to bridge understanding between the living and undead through the cinematic arts September 12, 2009"

Toronto was Mr. Romero's home in his final years. It was in Toronto he would make his final films and they would also have there world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival during Midnight Madness. Here is a collection of videos I made from the world premieres of Diary of the Dead, Survival of the Dead and the welcome ceremony in honor of Mr. Romero's Canadian citizenship.  

RIGOR MORTIS: Director Juno Mak Interview [From The Archives 09/10/13]

                               Director Juno Mak speaking with Robert Aaron Mitchell

First of all, I would like to say I feel very honored to be able to participate in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival ”midnight madness” section. I'm writing this email in Venice at the moment, where the film will be premiering here tonight. -- Juno Mak writing from Venice
 
What do you like about genre films?

I guess what’s fun about genre films throughout cinematic history is mainly because of the specific ”sets of rules” that apply to them. Such as zombies, you have to shoot them in the head. Vampires with silver and all. And then we have ”gueng si”, the traditional hopping vampires from Asia. Glutinous rice, wooden swords, yellow amulets, taoist priest, etc., etc. These rules only apply to this particular genre. A funky, yet special, type of rules, may I say.

But these genre rules have been evolving throughout the years too. It's a sort of evolution amongst us storytellers.

How are you putting your own spin on genre storytelling?

I want to explore the evolution of this genre. More humane, more focused on the drama, the sadness. We have also gathered the original elements from the genre, deconstructed and reconstructed it. Giving it a new touch, and most importantly, I, personally, wanted to explore the emotional side of it. The struggles these characters go through in life. The main theme of this film is about ”the fear of being forgotten” or even the fear of losing youth. Some sort of loneliness among us as humans. The world changed, everyone changed and adapted to a better life. But these characters they didn't.

What did you like about the original Mr. Vampire films that were apart of "gueng si"genre?

To me, the original Mr Vampire films represent not only a big part of my childhood. But also a golden time period of the Hong Kong cinematic history. Anyhow, the ”gueng si” genre has been gone for almost 30 years now.

You cast a lot of the original actors from the Mr. Vampire films, what made you decide to bring them into the film and what was it like to work with them?

What really fascinated me was the wrinkles on the actors and actresses faces after so many years. It, for me, represented their sorrow, their struggles in the most powerful, yet subtle way. I'm sure they have been through a lot being on the film set of RIGOR MORTIS. I sensed that this was not only a sort of revisiting the genre for myself as a director, or even a script writer. It was  a revisiting for every one of them. A bond that belonged to them. I'm glad to be among the original actors.

What would you say you have done with the "gueng si" genre conventions and made them your own?

RIGOR MORTIS itself is not a remake of the original, nor a sequel or prequel. To me personally its more like some sort of a revisit to the genre. The film is about life, not purely a gore slasher, but also an evolution of the genre, with a heavy yet dramatic twist on the story. I have personally taken out the comedic element from among the elements in the original. There might be some sort of humor in RIGOR MORTIS, but the film is not purely a comedy.


Originally Appeared 9/10/13 Midnight Madness Blog

Larry Fessenden Interview with Robert A. Mitchell

October 2008 was the first time I met Larry Fessenden after the premiere of I Sell The Dead at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. We had a great interview discussing his career making films from the the formation of his production company Glass Eye Pix his own genre pictures from Habit to The Last Winter as well as acting in films directed by Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out The Dead) and Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers) just to name a few films and directors he has worked with. Larry is extremely talented, charismatic, passionate about making films and has a great knowledge of cinema.