Cuarón: Roma got me out of the closet

"Roma" has allowed Alfonso Cuarón to “come out of the closet.” The director, who won an Oscar for his film "Gravity", has, in fact, a photographic vein and his most recent film, currently in post-production, has allowed him to stay behind the camera from beginning to end.

“After 'Gravity', which had the good fortune of making lots of money, I was offered big films, sequels, franchises, but as Guillermo del Toro says: sometimes you eat the cereal not because of the cereal itself, but because of the toy inside.”

“'Gravity' was that cereal and despite temptations, I knew I'd have the opportunity to make the film I wanted, in my country, and reinvent myself. Thus, Roma has given me the chance to come out of the photographic closet, as I was able to direct and do the photography for one of my films, and it was a pleasure. Photography was what I wanted to do when I enrolled in cinema school,” he said.

Cuaron gave a talk on August 19 on the image of cinema, during an event sponsored by the photographic company Canon, at the Panamerican University in Mexico City, to which there were around 500 attendees.

During the encounter, Cuarón acknowledged that those who want to make movies shouldn't do what he did, to break into the so-called seventh art.

“I took whatever job would get be close to a set; I worked as a camera assistant, production assistant, boom operator, until I finally became a director's assistant.”

“I'd never recommend young people to follow that path. Nowadays, you can make a film with a cell phone and a computer, that's enough,” he said.

Although he did caution of one danger: "It all becomes uniform. Technology speaks for you. Like Instagram. You take a pic, add a filter..it's not interesting, it's not good. The only word I can think for it is 'cool'."

Thus, he used the same analogy to talk about superhero movies, although he said he respects the genre. “Theaters have been seized by this big-budget films that have displaced others and, well, I'm not against them. I admire those who have the wisdom to keep being artists with integrity.”

“There are other platforms which were unthinkable before that now have a lot to do with streaming; I have nothing against superhero movies, it's just that several of them are the same photograph with different filters, and that's tough!”

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