Interview with AFF Audience Award winning filmmaker in Indiewire

indieWIRE INTERVIEW: Hans Canosa, director of "Conversations With Other Women"

by indieWIRE (August 9, 2006)

Director Hans Canosa's romance/drama "Conversations With Other Women" stars Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart as a pair who meet and flirt at a wedding reception. The sexual tension rises as the two leave the party and head to a hotel room, where the night turns into a bounty of passion, but then changes to remorse. Canosa joined the filmmaking scene with "Alma Mater," which won the audience award at the Austin Film Festival in 2002. In his chat with indieWIRE, Canosa shares how "Conversations" came together, trying to find that elusive financier, and how fundamentalist Christianity brought him to film.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in the United States, but much of my childhood was spent in Southeast Asia. My parents are fundamentalist Christians, and I grew up on a series of mission compounds.

What were the circumstances that led you to become a filmmaker?

Since my parents' religion takes the Second Commandment literally -- "Thou shalt have no graven images or likeness of anything in heaven or on earth," I was not allowed to see television, theater or movies as a child. So of course I was destined to become a filmmaker.

Despite living on these restrictive mission compounds with a prohibition against film, I still knew that movies existed; studio marketing departments make sure of that. I remember handing out religious tracts under a billboard for "The Empire Strikes Back" in Tokyo, and seeing movie posters in a Cambodian refugee camp (right next to the Coca Cola machines). The moment when I converted to the religion of cinema came before I'd even seen a movie. It was almost like a fairy tale -- I found a mysterious book in my grandparents' attic. It was "The Making of Kubrick's 2001" and I read all 350 pages of it in an hour, just devoured it.
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