Liam LoPinto: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker

Interview with Guernslye Honorés

Get good quality sound. Test your mics. Do whatever, but it’s so hard to recreate good quality sound or fix anything in post. This isn’t very spiritual advice, but it will feel spiritual if you get it right.

As a part of our series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Liam LoPinto.

Liam LoPinto is a filmmaker and animator from New York City. He graduated from NYU Tisch’s UGFTV program in 2017. He also studied at Waseda University in Tokyo and attended CalArts’ Character Animation program from 2017–2021. His film French Fly was selected for CAA Moebius’ 5th Showcase. His documentary “Karam Camera” was made in partnership with Karam Foundation focusing on empowering young Syrian refugees. He’s a first generation Iranian-American and his work focuses on diaspora, refugees, immigrants, and dissidents. His time in Japan led to his collaboration with Shohreh Golparian, an established liaison of Iranian filmmakers and talents in Japan as well as Abbas Kiarostami’s assistant and translator for his last film, “Like Someone in Love.” He wrote and directed his short in Japanese after attending Shohreh Golparian’s retrospective for Iranian New Wave Cinema. His film The Old Young Crow won the Best of Festival award at Palm Springs in 2023.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit of the ‘backstory’ of how you grew up?

My mom is an Iranian Muslim woman from Mashhad, Iran. My dad is an Irish Catholic American from New Jersey. They met while attending University of Maryland in 1981, the year of the hostage crisis. I grew up in the late 90s and 2000s in New York City in pre and post 9/11 New York City. My dad is really silly and my mom is extremely serious. But most importantly, they’re both really kind people who value family above everything else. And they’ve both gone through dramatic changes in their lives from when I was a child til now. My dad worked at the World Trade Center, but now teaches aspiring little hockey goalies. My mom spent her life traveling around the world and gradually became more and more invested in her own faith. And there’s also my sister Nikki who is my best friend and as kind and smart as mom and dad. So despite whatever has gone on in my life, I’m really lucky.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

I was eight years old. Our language arts teacher, Ms. Saul, played The Miracle Worker by Arthur Penn in our class. And I was just haunted by it. I think it reminded me that texture is one of the most interesting aspects of filmmaking. It’s especially important for kids. Anne spelling out water in Helen’s hand. The echoes of laughter and shrieks. I was moved and disturbed and for the first time I appreciated dramatic material. I was so drawn to playful and comedic stories whether animation or live-action, but I had never felt that sense of melancholy so well done in the film. I remember watching James and The Giant Peach by Henry Selick a year after, and I just knew that I had to make things like this. The dramatic material interacting with the playful animation. I was almost ten and I felt like I was getting closer and closer to what I wanted to do in my life.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?

I was teaching a filmmaking workshop for Syrian refugee kids in Reyhanli, Turkey which sits on the Turkish-Syrian border. During the workshop, I asked the students to pair up to shoot their own films during the remainder of the day. The entire building where our studios took place, Karam House, was bursting with these kids moving furniture around and play acting and directing each other in each and every room. It was so beautiful to see all their creativity. I remember all of a sudden seeing a boy in a white sheet with no eyeholes walking around and bumping into the door. I looked and saw that they were filming a ghost story.

Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?

The most interesting person I’ve met is probably Shesh Uncle. He’s my friend Sanjna’s father. He is brilliant, diligent, and cool. He’s an engineer and his standards are incredibly high. I showed him my documentary about Syrian refugees and he was so taken by the Turkish baker depicted in the film. He went up to us after we showed the film and remarked about how he had kind of wished he could was an artist. We were all in shock.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

John Canemaker was my animation teacher at NYU. Once, during my second year, I came to his office and pitched him my short film that I was working on. I was all over the place. I didn’t know what I wanted. Whether it was approval, promotion, or some kind of pedestal. In a second, he motioned with his hand to stop me talking. And he said slowly and fixedly that I needed to take my time with my filmmaking journey. That it’s going to be a hard road and that he was here to give advice, but he wouldn’t promote my film. And honestly, I didn’t believe him. I was so stubborn that I could do everything on my own, that I didn’t let myself be teachable in that moment. Years and years later, I shared Crow with John and I broke into tears when I found out he liked the film. That long period of waiting. The patience it takes in order to develop into the filmmaker you need to be in order to finish your film. You don’t learn it until you go through it.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I think it’s always been “trust the process.” It sounded so vague and dumb when I first heard it. But it’s not. Whatever you make in the end is just not going to be as satisfying as the feeling you get making it. I made a movie about my grandfather and I remember finishing it thinking I would never show it to anyone. I was so scared at the idea of my own people judging me for attempting to portray my own culture. Taking someone else’s story and turning into your own was uncomfortable. And I didn’t submit the film into festivals for the very idea of not wanting to be judged for it. But I look back on that film and I see myself making the set, putting the film together with my family, and working with my grandfather. And I realize that I couldn’t get here, doing this interview and being in this position, without that process.

I am very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?

Films don’t grow unless they’re in dialogue with other films. Just like filmmakers. Without growth and organic relationships with other cultures and perspectives, filmmaking culture will inevitably become bankrupt. Beyond that, it’s important to honor other people’s storytelling traditions. Not every story has to be driven through the same lens and it’s important to let people depict their own cultures through their most authentic lens. Having dialogues between filmmakers that are also exchanging diverse cultural aspects is crucial. Getting language and dialogue right is crucial. And these kinds of things will change when more diverse creators enter positions of leadership.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

I’m writing my first feature film about my parents. I hope I do it well. I hope I can also depict New York City well. It’s kind of daunting, but it’s nice to be re-explore where I grew up.

Which aspect of your work makes you most proud? Can you explain or give a story?

Connecting with my diaspora really makes me happy. I’ve had a lot of other Iranians tell me that they’ve shown The Old Young Crow to their moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and kids. The fact that they identify with Mehrdad and that they see their culture animated on screen.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why.

1. Go for a walk. Before you make a big decision or you feel stuck, go on a walk. Maybe go down a different road that day.
2. Get good quality sound. Test your mics. Do whatever, but it’s so hard to recreate good quality sound or fix anything in post. This isn’t very spiritual advice, but it will feel spiritual if you get it right.
3. Get a sketchbook. When I applied for CalArts’ Character Animation program, we had to make a sketchbook as an application. That sketchbook that I was working on began with that initial sketching session in a graveyard in Tokyo which eventually led to Crow. It’s so nice to be able to get lost and have fun with just making and designing and creating something for yourself. That piece of yourself is preserved in that book and you can always pick it up to bring yourself back to that time.
4. Reclaim your roots. Understanding your relationship with your family and your relationship with your community and upbringing is an incredibly important aspect when drawing upon your own inspiration for filmmaking. Growing up, I hid my background and I spent a significant amount of time trying to get that time back by getting to know my grandfather, Iranian cinema, and language. It took being in Japan, a culture that I deeply admired, and being surrounded by Japanese directors who commented on how much they love Iranian cinema for me to actually realize that I, myself, was also from another beautiful Eastern culture.
5. Lift everyone up. Like Totoro and Mei and Satsuki raising the trees from the ground. The idea that everything is a competition and we have to edge people out in order to get ahead in art or film has always looked ridiculous to me. There’s way more opportunities for people to draw on similarities and commonalities and support rather than divide. I think it’s easy to look at subjective art or film festival selections and be astonished by selections or acclaim that you feel may be best elsewhere, but in the end, you can get consumed by this. Forming a collective and community and building something with people you admire. Something that the next generation can build too. That will last a lot longer than your films.

When you create a film, which stakeholders have the greatest impact on the artistic and cinematic choices you make? Is it the viewers, the critics, the financiers, or your own personal artistic vision? Can you share a story with us or give an example about what you mean?

When I was making my documentary short Karam Camera with Shaimaa and Hana, I learned a lot about who a film’s stakeholders should be. Shaimaa and Hana are young Syrian refugee filmmakers. Shaimaa made a film about the mistreatment of the poor and Hana made a film about a bakery. Their films were not the typical depictions of the Syrian tragedy. They wanted to make films that reflected youth and sisterhood and community. These aren’t topics that are expressed often in the contemporary cinema about refugees. The problem was that many people who I showed the film to wanted there to be a more contemporary arc in the film. Simply depicting youth and discovery wasn’t enough. I would get comments like “people won’t want to see a full feature film about Syrians. You have to cut it down so people will watch it.” I was so consumed with how non-westerners would perceive these two girls that I needed to take a break. I started reading more accounts from Syria and doing more research and then I took a step back. I went back to the edit and I just looked at Hana and Shaimaa and I said, “I’m going to make the best film I can make that highlights them. This film is for them.” And hopefully I did that.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I want to build a refugee film school and teach more and more refugee filmmakers. I feel like there’s a huge opportunity to empower refugees by giving them the chance to tell their own narratives. It would also be incredible to connect refugee diaspora filmmakers. Filmmakers from Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan being able to have a dialogue with each other and learning from each other is an idea that excites me a lot. Especially young filmmakers. We really need to feed their fire because they’ll push film form. And what excites me even more than that is the potential for them to evolve beyond documenting their own conditions and pushing the limits of genre filmmaking. The next great horror comedy or romantic comedy could come from a refugee filmmaker and I find that incredible.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this. :-)

I would love to share the sketchbook and film with Mika Zibanejad who plays as a Center on the New York Rangers. I’d bring my dad along and we’d grab some lunch and talk hockey. Mika is half Swedish, half Iranian so seeing him play made my mom, my family, and I very proud. I think he’d really like the film and it would be nice to include him in works later down the road!

How can our readers further follow you online?

We’re constantly updating our instagram @theoldyoungcrow and our website theoldyoungcrow.com

And I’ve been really dedicated on improving my own instagram and webpage. I’ve not been that great at this in the past, but I’m learning! @pintobuns liamlopinto.com

This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!

About the interviewer: Guernslye Honoré, affectionately known as “Gee-Gee”, is an amalgamation of creativity, vision, and endless enthusiasm. She has elegantly twined the worlds of writing, acting, and digital marketing into an inspiring tapestry of achievement. As the creative genius at the heart of Esma Marketing & Publishing, she leads her team to unprecedented heights with her comprehensive understanding of the industry and her innate flair for innovation. Her boundless passion and sense of purpose radiate from every endeavor she undertakes, turning ideas into reality and creating a realm of infinite possibilities. A true dynamo, Gee-Gee’s name has become synonymous with inspirational leadership and the art of creating success.