Spliced Up Nice

Short of Breath seems the closest to linear narrative of the group you're screening here in Miami. How did you create that story?

The film started as a mood. I wanted to make a film about suicide and depression. I was working as a counselor at a psychiatric hospital in the San Francisco Bay area, and these themes were on my mind. One day I happened to see some 16mm film cans that had been tossed in a dumpster in the hospital garage. I took them home and screened them; they were still in good shape. They turned out to be old training films for doctors. The subject was "bedside manner" techniques to handle patients in crisis. This was an incredible find. I began screening the films over and over and the project began to take [shape], using the doctor/patient interview as the throughline.

Are you influenced by any particular filmmaker?

Well, there are a number of filmmakers working today that I admire. Bruce Connor certainly is working in a similar area. I guess one filmmaker who has influenced me is Chris Marker, especially his Sans Soleil.

In King of the Jews, you mix up fact and fiction, which seems to be the thesis of the film -- that history has been tinkered with. Is it using your own family's home-movie footage?

Right.

Is this personal-essay format a trend?

No, that's just how I wanted to make that particular film.

What are you working on now?

Writing grant proposals.

I guess your style of filmmaking must make it tough to make a living at it.

I don't. I teach -- filmmaking, part-time at Stanford and the College of San Mateo in the Bay Area. Gotta make ends meet.