Like so many filmmakers, from amateurs to professionals, there came a time when New York Film Academy graduate Vilan Trub felt like a failure after being unable to complete his first attempt at directing a feature film. As the cliché goes, most people will fail many times before achieving something great.
To take his mind off of his disappointing debut, Trub went to the NY Film Forum to enjoy a screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Bande a Part” (Band of Outsiders) — a movie that was never completed. He kept thinking if Godard could make that film, there’s no reason he couldn’t put a feature together himself.
“That’s the ultimate lesson we, as filmmakers, should take from Godard’s work,” says Trub. “All you need is a simple story and the will to go out and shoot it to completion. If you’ve studied movies and why they work, you’ll know how to make even the smallest feature work.”
With a newfound motivation and reenforced confidence, Trub went out and completed the feature film, “Susie Q,” which surrounds two down-and-out brothers spending their days fighting over the attention of a neighborhood ‘bad girl’ while plotting how to rob her.
“This movie is meant to show what it’s like to be young, what it’s like to be in love, what it’s like to think you’re in love, and what it’s like to be stupid,” said Trub. “I want people to watch this movie and remember what specific emotions and feelings they had when they were the same age as the characters in the movie. The only way I could achieve that was by creating characters and a world that are ridiculous and generally unbelievable. Sometimes the only way to be reminded of a real feeling is by seeing the day dreams we create while living with that feeling. That is why the more ridiculous the characters’ actions seem, the more believable their emotions become.”
“Susie Q,” starring Antonio Robles, Ausar English, and Olga Elliot, will premiere Thursday, April 28 at 7:15PM at the NYC Independent Film Festival at the Producers Club in Manhattan.
“NYFA was definitely an important experience for me because it gave me the opportunity to work together with other filmmakers,” said Trub. “It showed me what kind of other personalities are going into this and what drives them and how. It was like being an athlete playing against the best competition. We learned how to work together for a common goal. There is a respect and at the same time the drive of knowing you want to be better than the other students and want to make the best movies ever made, because you know it’s in you.”
“Being a TA for a summer youth program at NYFA was just as important. It gave me the opportunity to see growing passions for cinema as they first start to develop. Everything is new to the students and what they consider important and inspiring and why is very interesting.”
With one successful feature film in the books, Trub is already preparing for his next movie, which he describes as an “anti sci-fi movie.”
“It’s about the gene inside us that drives us to explore, whether crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time to see new lands or exploring our own limits as human beings,” addes Trub. “Is that drive inherently part of our existence?”
For more information and tickets for “Susie Q,” please CLICK HERE.
To view the trailer for “Susie Q,” please CLICK HERE.