A San Antonio native has debuted a brand new function film that places the Alamo Metropolis and many native expertise in entrance of the digital camera. Justin Rodriguez wrote and directed Solely Right here a Little Longer, a domestically produced drama that premiered in late Might at Brick at Blue Star Arts.
The film explores themes of identification, sacrifice, and residential because it follows a younger man, 18-year-old Sam Palacios, who’s getting ready to ship out to Vietnam. Kruz Malonado, one other San Antonio native who’s now starring as Peter Pan on Broadway, leads the forged.
That is the fourth brief film that has been written and directed by Rodriguez by his movie manufacturing firm, Courageous Footage. Rodriguez developed an early love for cinema throughout a childhood crammed with visiting the neighborhood video rental retailer and watching motion pictures on HBO along with his mom.
“They had been movies I did not actually perceive, however I liked,” Rodriguez says.
Nonetheless, music was Rodriguez’s gateway into filmmaking.
“I liked making music in my teenage years, and I ultimately married the 2 concepts collectively,” he explains. “I began making scores for different individuals’s tasks, then I ultimately had the brilliant thought of writing my very own movies. The remainder was historical past.”
The filmmaker’s fascination with the late ’60s impressed Solely Right here a Little Longer’s exploration of the impression of the Vietnam Conflict draft.
“That is the a part of historical past that has all the time me essentially the most rising up. I all the time paid consideration to that half in any classroom, so it is a dream to create characters of that period,” Rodriguez says.
All of Rodriguez’s motion pictures have been shot and produced in San Antonio. Whereas Rodriguez paid out of pocket to fund his first movie, 2018’s Lush, he utilized for and landed grants that helped to fund his three different motion pictures. Solely Right here a Little Longer was made doable partly by help from a grant awarded by the San Antonio Division of Arts and Tradition.
“I like capturing in San Antonio, and I all the time have,” Rodriguez says. “It is crammed with wonderful areas. Additionally, there’s an unbelievable quantity of expertise right here, and the delight everybody brings to the set is unmatched. There is a rising movie motion in San Antonio, and this forged and crew are proof of that.”
Moviemaker Journal has seen San Antonio’s cinematic attraction. The town earlier this 12 months introduced that San Antonio, for a seventh straight 12 months, made the journal’s “Finest Locations to Dwell and Work as a Moviemaker” record.
As he sends off Solely Right here a Little Longer to the movie pageant circuit, Rodriguez mentioned filmmaking, to him, stays vastly rewarding in numerous methods.
“Each single one in all my tasks, I’m continually studying increasingly more,” he says. “Like a human on this earth, I’ll all the time be open to studying as I get older and by no means assume I’ve all of it discovered. The identical goes for filmmaking.”
Movie buffs can comply with Courageous Footage’ Instagram account for information of Solely Right here a Little Longer’s launch.
