Meet Joan Pauls: Film Director and Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Joan Pauls and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joan, do you have any habits that you feel contribute to your effectiveness?
A dangerous habit: working all the time. In the artistic careers, where usually you organise your own time and tasks, it’s important setting clear goals and don’t stop until achieving them. It becomes something more personal than professional, mainly at the beginning. If it’s not personal to you, if you don’t need to do a movie, to tell a story, to say something to the others, then it will be incredibly difficult for you to live working or to work living. Both worlds will be merged during a long period of time and it’s not the most pleasant or easy ways of living. To survive, you have to feel it. Nowadays, in the Arts, it’s a matter of surviving this long period until you get inside the industry wheels. Then, little by little, the days where you can choose and separate work and life will come and you will have succeeded.

Obviously, it’s a dangerous road, because the line of a workaholic is thin and full of greys, and you need a strong mind not to lose yourself. You have to merge your personal and professional lives, but keeping with you the capacity of ceasing when you decide it’s time to put an end to it.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I do movies. Momentously, in the short film format. I do write and direct them. I am most known for my best and most awarded short films, which are ‘Wounds’ and ‘One way flight’. I have always worked from a literary aspect placing the script on the center of the production. Writing the script, the story, the characters, the dialogues and the narrative is my main talent. You could say I am a writer who directs. I come up with original ideas or original ways of telling the same stories to have my own voice and to differentiate from others.

A director is basically someone that has something to say because if cinema doesn’t speak up, you are losing a precious opportunity. But even if you have a lot of things to scream, to do so in this crazy expensive art that cinema is, having them is not enough. You will need three pills: the pill of patience, the pill of faith, and the pill of dealing with frustration. Take one of them every month all your life.

Nowadays, we have our head full of dreams and very ambitious goals, because that’s what the older generations and the standards of living put in our heads, and they are incredibly difficult to achieve. It’s like running a marathon where on the sides you have people throwing to your feed massive balls to make you fall. And you have to keep running and avoiding these balls for a lot of years, which most people is not capable of or willing to.

Probably you don’t know the Catalan situation in my country, but I’ve been raised in a situation of repression and I have a huge sensitivity for injustice. So which stories am I interested in? I always try to use cinema as a tool for denounce and criticism of real life events. Raising awareness through the audience and interpellating change with its catalyst power. If you watch my films you will see my social focus. I usually work with real stories and realities from our world that need thorough examination. Sometimes, setting a blurry line between fiction and reality.

The story can also live in the world of fiction and imagination to send its message. For example, in one of the movies I have written, I’m interested in stressing the importance of Art as the key element for the survival of our species. We are usually told that intelligence is what makes us different from other beings. But robots, probably a reality in the next 50 years, will have better intelligence. It’s not it. Emotions are not either, as animals feel in a very similar way. It’s the capacity of creating something new what defines our species.

I am here in Los Angeles because it is the best place to achieve the balance that I follow between the artistic and authorial side, as is the work of an author; and the commercial side, as is the work of a businessman. Always having in your mind that if you are doing a film is to tell something valuable to the world. As an artist, I feel personally connected to this goal in a world full of needed revolutions.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If a friend was visiting me – wait! A lot of friends came visiting. I live 10.000KM away from home, but surprisely I got more visits now than when I was living in London or Madrid. Los Angeles has something in its name that attracts everybody.

In the city, most people have heard of the most common spots to visit, but I’ll try to avoid some of them here to give a more personal itinerary of the city.

We would start the day, of course, taking the car. We would go to have breakfast in the new Hawthorne Grill, a ‘copy’ of restaurant where Tarantino shot the bar scene of Pulp Fiction. Then we would take a walk to the Barnsdall Art Park and visit the magnificent Hollyhock house. Then, we would go to watch a movie to the little and magic cinema of New Beverly Cinema, and after that we would go lunch to the Grand Central Market in Downtown, a sea of colours and cuisines. We could also visit there the Central Library, before moving to the sea for the afternoon. We would walk in the beautiful Venice Canals in Venice beach and also discover the sea houses of Malibu.

At the end of the day, we would have to visit the Hollywood boulevard and the walk of fame, to find our favourite stars, and then try the burgers of In&Out, to scape from all the glamour. We could end the day in the the rooftop of the Perch, to believe we are giants and that everything is possible! Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I still have a long way to go and an enormous space for improving, but if I get to be today where I am is thanks to a lot of people who supported me, either directly with my projects, or indirectly permitting my obsessions, my one-track mind or my lack of time.

My parents let me grow up in a free and creative environment where I could always be myself and express what I felt. It sounds obvious, but it’s less common that we think and it should never be taken for granted.

For me it all started with the movie ‘Braveheart’, who captivated me when I was a child. Mel Gibson introduced me to the world of writing stories and taught me the power of cinema and the importance of freedom.

Also, the book ‘The alchemist’ was a tremendous influence when I was growing up, teaching me the value of having dreams, how we have to fight for them and the importance to have faith on the Universe and an optimistic state of mind.

Website: www.joanpauls.com

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Twitter: @joanpauls

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Youtube: @joanpauls