Our latest episode of Direct Chat will feature our first doc filmmaker! Lorenzo Cuevas’ short doc The Revitalization of Central City South is a selection of the 2020 Phoenix Film Festival. Join us for our chat at 11am on Friday, May 22nd live.
We’ll take audience questions through a chat and also ask their opinion on questions like:
- What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned as a filmmaker?
- How have you spent this time of social distancing as it relates to filmmaking?
- What’s on your streaming list?
When:
Friday, May 22nd
11am (video will be recorded and posted for anyone to view after)
Where:
Register here via Zoom. (you will need to download the Zoom app to watch the live feed).
Cost:
FREE event – open to the public (limited to 100 participants)
Who:
The event will be hosted by IFP Phoenix Program Director Aaron Kes and we will be interviewing Lorenzo Cuevas. More info on Lorenzo:
I’m Lorenzo Cuevas, and my short documentary, The Revitalization of Central City South, is a selection of the 2020 Phoenix Film Festival.
Fun fact, in 2014 I was a volunteer at the phoenix film fest! I was a liaison to blind filmmaker David Block, who was screening Dancing Outside of the Box.
Through a chance encounter, I met the subject of the next film I would make at that festival.
My family comes from Chihuahua, Mexico and I was born in El Paso Texas.
I’ve always been a creative type and I used to do traditional art before I became obsessed with photography and filmmaking. I used to paint with acrylic on canvas and use charcoal and pastels.
After high school, I studied automotives and became a mechanic for Mercedes Benz. I missed the arts after not too long and I went back to college. I received a heavy dose of darkroom photography learning at Phoenix College, and I did my first formal schooling in filmmaking at Scottsdale Community College. After that I went to ASU and got into the Fiction program where I wrote short stories and screenplays.
Since college I have spent a few years freelancing in the Los Angeles area doing a variety of jobs from photo assisting, doing lighting and audio on indie sets, art department, and making my own photos and videos for people. I am currently living in Phoenix again, and making doc-style content for local non-profits like Habitat for Humanity and Urban Farming Education. And also cooking up my own personal projects in my down time.
Documentaries are where I have leaned the last few years, because there are so many stories worth telling in daily life. And they are attractive to me because they don’t require as many moving parts as shooting narrative content, which is a gift for those operating on a small budget. Shooting interviews is the most exciting part of doc work because you never know what will come out of someone’s mouth after you roll camera.

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