A San Antonio native has debuted a brand new function film that places the Alamo Metropolis and plenty of 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 Could 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 making 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 quick film that has been written and directed by Rodriguez by means of his movie manufacturing firm, Courageous Photos. Rodriguez developed an early love for cinema throughout a childhood crammed with visiting the neighborhood video rental retailer and watching films on HBO along with his mom.
“They had been movies I did not actually perceive, however I beloved,” Rodriguez says.
Nonetheless, music was Rodriguez’s gateway into filmmaking.
“I beloved making music in my teenage years, and I ultimately married the 2 concepts collectively,” he explains. “I began making scores for different folks’s tasks, then I ultimately had the brilliant concept of writing my very own movies. The remaining 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 Struggle draft.
“That is the a part of historical past that has all the time me probably 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 films 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 films. Solely Right here a Little Longer was made potential partly by means of help from a grant awarded by the San Antonio Division of Arts and Tradition.
“I really like capturing in San Antonio, and I all the time have,” Rodriguez says. “It is crammed with superb places. Additionally, there’s an unbelievable quantity of expertise right here, and the pleasure 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 observed San Antonio’s cinematic enchantment. The town earlier this yr introduced that San Antonio, for a seventh straight yr, made the journal’s “Finest Locations to Reside and Work as a Moviemaker” record.
As he sends off Solely Right here a Little Longer to the movie pageant circuit, Rodriguez stated filmmaking, to him, stays massively rewarding in several methods.
“Each single certainly one of my tasks, I’m always studying increasingly,” 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 suppose I’ve all of it found out. The identical goes for filmmaking.”
Movie buffs can observe Courageous Photos’ Instagram account for information of Solely Right here a Little Longer’s launch.
