(3 minutes reading time)
Hi!
If you are receiving this email, it is because either Carmen or myself, if not both, have shared a set, a festival, a mixer, or any common film-related love with you. We intended to send a first non-annoying message and somewhat sporadic newsletter from A FILMS saying Hi! and sending our good wishes for the new year. After all, we closed 2024 on a very high note despite the state of the industry. We produced 169 short videos in one single year for Tzu Chi USA, had a fun and successful festival run with Los Sandy’s, and produced the NY section of the new music documentary of Fernando Trueba. Yes, Trueba! Do you remember the delightfully haunting album Lágrimas Negras? He produced it! Or the 1993 Oscar winner Belle Epoque? He was the director! Him. Side note: we are so privileged to leave our sets soul-lifted… sigh
Photos by Alvaro Saavedra
But instead of resting, regrouping, and thoughtfully planning the new year with positivism, 2025 has been more bumpy than we expected. To start, five wildfires struck Los Angeles. Two of them devoured Pacific Palisades/Malibu and Altadena in Northern LA, reducing to ashes nearly 30,000 buildings, mostly residential, displacing thousands of people, and taking the lives of 29. Without delay, I am called to urgently get into Disaster Relief Mode and put together two teams to cover Tzu Chi USA’s efforts to help those affected. From here, everything else has been on standby for me until I returned to New York almost two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a political earthquake hits globally. Trump is finally president again, creating turmoil with his battery of changes seeding uncertainty left and right in the US and overseas. How would this affect the weakened American film industry?
I am scanning the film-specialized press, looking for hints on how the new direction of this country will affect the film industry. Will “America First” mean he will force platforms and studios to bring back the jobs they took overseas? Or, as far as the money comes to the US, as it still does, is America already the first as per his parameters? A fundamental question arises: What is then America? A financial concept or its people? But that is another conversation. What is certain is that his appointed “special envoys” to reboot Hollywood, John Voight, Mel Gibson, and Silvester Stallone, raise more questions than hope. Note that some of them had no idea about this until Trump published on True Social with the info.
Steven Zeitchik’s interesting analysis in The Hollywood Reporter shows how the industry is reacting and moving towards or against, often shifting, but definitively more polarized. The Motion Picture Association is already flirting with the new administration, while the Academy has yet to make a move after embracing diversity after years of criticism. Maybe at the Oscars? Don’t miss the detail about the Latino community: the top moviegoers by far, 45% of which voted for Trump, while they are being demonized and prosecuted.
After witnessing an LA of ashes and tears, twisted metal structures covered in soot, I can’t help thinking that this fire took in minutes the homes, resources, memories and dreams of many without caring about their social status, job situation, creed, or who they voted for. It just burned. Everything. The fire prevention, extinction, and recovery work needs to be done as horizontally as blind as the fire is. Outside the silver screen, no 80s action heroes will fix these. It’s on us.
For Health, Wisdom, and many Stories.
Photos by Jaime Puerta
Recommendations:
To watch: I am still here.
Overrated: The Brutalist and The Substance
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Read in Substack: @afilmsusa