Chromista Director Eddie Alcazar On His Experimental Approach To Filmmaking

Chromista’s Eddie Alcazar talks all things directing with 1.4's Stephen Whelan.

So, let’s talk about Red Terror. How did the collaboration with Abel come about?

Eddie: He just hit me up on Instagram, actually. It was right after the Cannes Film Festival when I went out for the screening of my short The Vandal. It kind of got a good amount of press coverage and then he hit me up about it because he really loved it. The conversations were about just doing something on a bigger scale, right? Like some feature stuff. It’s pretty simple as far as that. So, it was about us talking for a year and a half, really, until the time was right where this new album seemed to be a good fit that allowed the freedom to just do my thing. Abel was pretty hands off, but working together on the video for Red Terror was a way for us to get to know each other and how each other works.

I didn’t have any of the context around the meaning of the song title and its connection to what happened in Ethiopia [where Abel is from]. I knew none of that stuff when I was making it. I didn’t even have a song early on. Abel had the idea of a boy in a haunted forest, and then I came up with the rest and storyboarded it. When he played the song for me was when it took on another meaning. I didn’t even know any of the facts of what happened in Ethiopia until I got a little bit closer to us finishing it. But I felt like it was something that came through in areas of our conversations and I sensed it was connected to that.

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