Indie Interviews #7: Ryan Jafri

The Cure is a short film that lingers like a great feature. That’s just one of the reasons I was glad to interview the film’s director Ryan Jafri. Jafri’s film is a rare short that I would not only recommend seeing, it's one that I would recommend seeing at any cost. Watch the festival line-ups. Visit the film’s Web site (JafriPictures.com). Find any way you can to see it. Until then though, here is a little bit of background on the first short film I've recommended in five years. (Note: references to specific dates, though obviously outdated, were not changed at the time of posting.)

The Film Chair: You seem to be enjoying some great success. New York International Independent Film and Video Festival gave you an award. The director of the festival is taking your film to Greece to screen over there. And you have a screening in New York this Friday. How did it feel to start screening the film and to get the response you seem to be getting?
Ryan Jafri: It’s very exciting. We worked very hard on it and I’m really proud of how it turned out. The response we got was great. I got offered a few distribution deals and the president of the festival was so impressed that he screened it over at the Cyprus Film Festival in Greece. It got a great response over there as well. The screening is this Saturday, actually, on May 6th

FC: Oh yep. You’re right. On the distribution, though. How does distribution of a short film work as opposed to distributing a long-form feature?
RJ: For a short film, what they can do is make a compilation DVD. All the shorts that (the distributor) has acquired will be put onto that DVD and then distributed worldwide or nationally or just be sold off of their website, or whichever way they choose to do it. A few people have approached me about it and they are still analyzing the film to see if they are going to go for it or not. It looks pretty positive, so I’m pretty sure they are going to go for it.

FC: That’s good. Well, I read your resume online and I wanted to know how your experience in your internships and schooling has set you up for making this movie and inevitably marketing it and all the stuff that comes along with making a film.
RJ: As far as school is concerned I went to the New York Film Academy and that’s where I came up with the core of the story of The Cure. It was supposed to be my final project, but there were a few mishaps with equipment so I didn’t get to do it the way I wanted. I remade it the way it was supposed to be in 2003. I rewrote it and everything. The Film Academy was a good help. I met the some nice people. It was good for networking, but I also did some internships on some film sets. To be honest, I learned more from doing those internships than I did at film school because there is a lot more hands on training, working with the director, storyboarding, scripting, etc. Hiring crew members and what not. That taught me a lot more than sitting in a classroom reading text books. So in my opinion working on film sets and doing internships is a lot more educational than just going to film school.

Indie Interviews #7: Ryan Jafri...continues here