Daniel Eduvijes Carrera, 29, is a Columbia Film School graduate whose black and white thesis film, Primera Comuniòn, has won many accolades from critics and awards from film festival juries across the country. It has also been his calling card to major grant awards, most notably from The Rockefeller Foundation New Media Artist grant awarded through the Tribeca Institute.

We here at NAICA saw his film at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film Festival and were bowled over by it’s pristine beauty and it’s subtle, yet pointed, social commentary. Carrerra took some time to speak at length with NAICA editor, Maria Colòn, about the benefits of attending film school, casting non-actors, and his upcoming projects. See the video player for an exclusive look at one of Carrera’s little seen short films, Lonche, a film he says was a trial run for Primera Comuniòn.

Maria: Dani thank you for speaking with me. How are you doing today?

Dani: I’m doing great!

M: So you moved out to Tinsel Town?

D: (Laughing) Well I’m originally from around Tinsel Town. So it was a homecoming for me. But I love New York. I went out there directly after finishing my undergrad. I got into film school right off the bat. Had a one-week vacation between undergrad and grad and moved out to New York without even having visited. I was there for about five years on and off with traveling in between to make my films, shooting in México. But at a certain point I wanted to be closer to family. I mean I always knew I’d end in L.A. so I made a point to live other places.

M: Really? Where?

D: Oh San Francisco, New York, Mexico, and a little time in Spain. All the while knowing I’d end up here. Besides the (film) industry is in L.A. I actually like the vibe here.

M: Let’s talk about film school. You attended Columbia University - nothing to sniff at. What was your experience like there? I’ve heard from others it was not so great but for others still it was a boon.

D: I think film school…well for a lot of people the idea of film school I a questionable one. I mean the, “you can’t teach film making,” and so on. I think part of that is true, but you have to also tap into a part of your own intuition and talent for telling a story visually. But for me it was necessary. Being able to have that space and that time to develop my craft and then also to be able to receive student loans so I can concentrate on the work. I don’t think I could have done that if I had a full time job, but you’re also surrounded by a community of collaborators. You work on their films they work on yours. You’re suddenly surrounded by, you know, your crew. (Laughs) It was a positive experience for me. I look at the films before and the ones I made afterwards and you can just see it. And then just working with my peers. Really it wasn’t about working so much with the professors. For me it was getting the feedback from my peers, and being able to make mistakes…

M: …without a whole lot riding on it because you’re in your own world. I went to graduate school for visual arts and it really did provide me with a buffer from dealing with the day-to-day aspects of surviving. You really are cocooned from reality.

D: Yeah, and being able to concentrate in this really focused way on yourself as developing artist, screenwriter, director. It was such a positive experience for me. It has improved my filmmaking. Primera Comunòn is a film that would not have existed had those three or four years to develop myself.

M: Can you expound on the idea of developing one’s own voice through film? I read that you have been making films since you were very young and having been in a large family of nine you used them in your early work. How is that training different from an academic training?

D: I think I have always been really fascinated with filmmaking. It’s curious because one of my first days in class at Columbia one of the professors asked us all to talk about why we wanted to go into film making, and I was kind of surprised by myself when I heard my own response: I started talking about when I was little I a little bit of a pack rat. I saved everything. I had the need to capture, to hold on to things, to just save them because I thought they were going to be really valuable to me one day. I couldn’t let go of anything. I would store everything as memories. When my sister, I’m youngest of all my siblings, bought photographic cameras or when they bought video cameras it took that idea of storing memories to a whole other level. Literally I could store moments, capture moments and the experience of life. That’s kind of lofty and big and philosophical but there was definitely that need to capture experience and moments and hold on to them. I did that a lot, making these short films to experiment, but they were just for fun. I think going to film school has taught me to make clear decisions, and to see film as a language that I am manipulating. But also, to think of the audience and what I want to share with them.

M: That’s what I was wondering because film, well, all visual arts, they are a language all their own. I was wondering if you would say that or not about the medium as a form of sophisticated language one in which you can explore emotional ideas or even philosophical ideas, wouldn’t you say?

D: Yes, definitely. I made this film, a pseudo documentary film, about my brother who had passed away. But it was me going into my own journal entries which had nothing to do with my brother’s passing away but it was trying to create a connection between the two. It was almost like an essay film but it was confusing. I was almost purging something out of myself, but anyone who saw it, the audience, came away confused by it, really confused, like “What was that about?’

      It won a couple of awards. It screened at the Berkeley Art Museum. It had a lot of heart but I don’t think that it communicated as effectively. But going to film school allowed me to tap into what I was already trying to communicate but more accessible.

M: It seems a lot of people who become hung up on the notion of film as an art form actually do their best to not communicate with the audience but it’s interesting that you had the opposite inclination.

D: Well I feel like I owe it to my audience. I mean if you want to pull some really esoteric arty stuff but you suffer the consequence of not reaching as broad an audience, which is fine, but I want to reach as many people as possible while remaining true to my voice, my themes and my approach to it all.

M: Do you think you can successfully marry both of those ideas together? The idea of the art film and a film that has a mass appeal?

D: I think Primera Comuniòn is a reflection that. But in film school I did grow as a writer, a screenwriter, as well as a director but knowing there had to be certain elements that would make the film an exciting dramatic experience. The most basic example of that is having a chase sequence in the film. One of the first original drafts of the script was this moody surrealist contemplation of this child in a church. It was going to very symbolic. But it really didn’t have much of a story. It was more of a visual art film. But the more I looked at the story the more I realized I could explore this rite of passage in a much more complex way by having other characters and these girls having this ostensible first communion and the boy kind of being brought into a street gang and the other boy suffering the consequences of that ritual which would bring up the question of who is being initiated? How and why and what does it mean?

M: Let’s talk about the themes in Primera Comuniòn. I read a review by Karen Wong, I think she’s with the Tribeca Institute, having seen your film she says the film, “focuses on religious hypocrisy and society’s capacity for negligence.”

But within the context of a Latino film I feel that is too superficial a reading because the film features a Native protagonist. Clearly the little boy is a Mexican Indian and the two twin girls having their communion are of European descent and a higher class than he which points to class and race issues. Can you speak about these issues within a Latin construct? Was it always in your mind to bring up these issues in relation to the cultural dominance of the Catholic Church and European ancestry?

D: I grew up in Southern California but my family had been living in Tijuana many years before I was born. I have a sister who passed away in Tijuana so we would go to visit her grave. So I grew up crossing the border often. I just remember having this relationship and seeing the street children and being really impressed by them, running around in the streets. I felt bad for them, I knew they were poor, but on the other hand, I was fascinated by them. I felt a sort of affinity towards them. When I in ally was at the university I decided to study abroad, well not abroad, down in México. I was at UNAM in México City. I was just floored by the class structure, by the divide between the uber-rich and the uber-poor, and very little in between. I wanted to explore that idea. To me there is that obvious structure between classes of the very wealthy looking down on the poor but participating in traditional customs, like the first communion, but there being a hypocrisy there – not really noticing that there are these children suffering just outside of the church and inside there is this very opulent pompous ritual going on. I wanted to explore the irony in that. I also wanted it to be a reflection of the indigenous population in México, and I wanted it to be a story that gave a young indigenous boy the privilege of being the lead character…of being the focus of the story. It was very intentional.

M: So what about your casting choices?

D: You know actually I felt the lead actor (Marco Antonio) didn’t look indigenous enough! But then I saw his mother and she looked clearly indigenous so I decided to cast him on the basis that his mother would also play his mother in the film.

M: But these were all untrained actors right? So how did you find them? By the way, they were such an impressive cast. You could not tell they were untrained. They were that good.

D: Working with those kids was a dream. My producer hired a casting director for me, but later discovered I did not need one because this guy was bringing me all the actors he knew and for me the film was so visual that any false note would undermine the entire film. I thought you couldn’t hire a blue-eyed blond haired very obviously well fed little kid and then expect the audience to believe he’s been living on the street. For me it was more important to go find those people who understand the circumstances of the characters.

      But basically I selected my location which took a while to find, and after I found the town I combed all the local schools and walking around the town looking for the right kids who would bring something real to the characters. All the kids you see in the film are native to the town we shot in. Basically I asked them to tap into their own experiences. Basically they were playing themselves in many ways, and they are still there, still in their hometown.

      Anyway, after selecting them I worked with them for about a month to get them comfortable in front of the camera, showing them films, talking to them about performance.

M: Wow, so you were doing your own little “actor’s studio” there?

D: (laughs) We did have a little actor’s studio! It was so great working with them. I would have little 8 and 9 year olds coming in with sunglasses and scarves in México City, and it was nighttime and not cold, like little divas coming in, like they could possibly flatter me with a performance. But in contrast these kids (in the pueblo) their eyes lit up with the idea that they would be a part of the film. They gave more than 110%. And the town I felt became such a part of it that it was like a real local production not some people coming into the town taking it over and then leaving. They saw their own children being the stars of this piece that I thought got the town to really rally around the project. It was an amazing experience. On the last day of filming the lead actor, Marco Antonio, was weeping he didn’t want it to end!

M: Ohh that so sweet. How did you come across him?

D: I got permission from the local government to go into the schools to scout. So I would go into classrooms and ask the teacher if I could take a second to look around the class. I choose some kids who’d come out with me and I’d talk to them to see if they were interested in doing the project. Then I’d ask them to give me a little bit of a performance, an audition, you know, to see who would be too nervous, who was open to it. A lot of them said they anted to participate but obviously not all of them didn’t bring enough to it because these are very humble people and then you have these three city people coming in saying, “ACT!”

      But Marco, I thought he was too, I don’t want this to sound bad, but I thought he was…

M: Did you think he was too hammy?

D: No, well, I guess I had too rigid an idea of what the character was going to look like. I thought he was going to be younger and more…Marco Antonio didn’t look like he had suffered. Like one of my other characters had lost an eye on the streets of Mexico City when he was in his youth. I just thought Marco Antonio was too tall and too strappin’ a young healthy boy to play this child who has suffered on the streets. I was concerned about that. I didn’t consider him until one day we were scouting the kids as they came out onto the playground, and by then it had got around why we were there, and he came up to me and instead of trying to get into the film he started suggesting which kids he thought might be god. He started helping me select who among his peers might be more mature, who could give me a good performance. He was already on board. He was helping me in the casting. So I thought let’s just bring him along because he might good in another role. Then one day I thought, “Well let’s give him a really hard scene,” which is the one where he gets stabbed, and he just went for it. He got on the floor, he didn’t care who was watching, and just writhing and hurting, and I was just floored. I couldn’t stop thinking about him the whole ride home. I was so excited because I found him. He was so excited to get the part. And then his mother came on board to play his mother in the film. She was flattered by the whole thing and did really well. The whole thing just came together nicely. The youngest kid, the one with the knife…

M: Oh man, that was so grueling to watch.

D: (laughs) Yeah, he was, I believe, six.

M: My god! Tell me what was that like to direct a six year old to stab another youngster?

D: You know the two younger boys, in the script, were to be around six years old, and the older teenage boy instructing the younger to kill was supposed to be about thirteen. But the actor for that role was really 21years old. I thought he looked like a 17 or 18 year old. Marco Antonio was about nine when we shot the film. I found the older guy the night before we started shooting. I lost the other actor who was cast to play the teenager. So I just went with this guy.

M: So he’s also from that town?

D: Yeah they all are, all the kids. The twins are not, but the rest of the people in the film were.

M: Well let’s go back to the child on child violence. What did the parents of the boy who had to do the stabbing think about you directing their child to so something like that in a film?

D: The parents of the six year old who played that part (of the little street thug) were living in the U.S. at the time so they weren’t present. They left him with his grandmother, but Marco Antonio’s mom also took care of him as well. She is his aunt. So when they were on the film, Rico, Ricardo – that’s his name – was very excited to participate. It was such a positive experience working with them all. You know it screened on the arts and culture channel in México so for them to see it and to know they can flick on the television and see themselves is really great for them.

M: What was the response in México given that the film has a very pointed social-political bent? Did you get any criticism for the depiction of the ways in which the indigenous people are portrayed and the indifference of the church or cultural elite?

D: You know, surprisingly not. I did an interview for the arts and culture channel in México and it was probably the harshest criticism I got was about the religious element. Like am I anti-Catholic? It also screened in Los Angeles were the head priest there attend and he just came up to me after the screening and shook my hand without any questions or commentary. He didn’t give me a hard time about it. But I think audiences, particularly in México, see something honest about because that’s just the way things are.

M: Perhaps the aesthetics dissuaded people from criticizing? It is a beautifully shot film and the performances were incredible, but it does have a very pointed critique of the social political structure especially in relation to the church, no?

D: Yes, absolutely and that reflects my frustrations especially with the church, and the class structure in México. Pointing out the ways it confuses me and it doesn’t make any sense but I guess there’s this humanistic desire to have everyone have at least the same opportunities. Even the way I cast these roles, I wanted to have these kids that would not have otherwise had the opportunity to study acting and to also participate in the film production. You know it’s even a reflection of my own background because my family is a first generation Mexican American family and to study filmmaking takes a certain financial…you know I think it is a privilege sometimes to study the arts. So I wanted to inject these ideas into the film, but you know my friends have told me that in my critique of the Catholic churn I couldn’t be more Catholic. (Laughs) I agree with that.

M: Primera Comuniòn has brought you a lot of recognition, No? It’s been a nice touchstone to segue into larger projects. Before we go can you tell me what you will be working on next?

D: I’m on board to direct a feature film. The tentative title is Flights of Fancy, it’s the rags to riches real life story of Ricardo Saca, the brother of the current president of El Salvador. It’s been in pre-production for a couple of years. We just finished up the casting and hope to go into production at the end of the year. It’s pretty exciting. I also was nominated for the Tribeca Institute Rockefeller Foundation New media Artist grant. I was won of fourteen winners selected for the grant. I basically pitched them a screenplay idea and so I will be working on that.

M: Well congratulations. You deserve to have all sorts of accolades and grants especially grants, thrown at you. It really is such a beautiful film, and thank you for taking time to speak with us at NAICA.

D: Maria, thank you so much.