Stephen Spender, ideaXme arts ambassador interviews filmmaker Jordan Horowitz.
Stephen: Today, we are talking with a multi award-winning filmmaker. Hello! Thanks so much for doing this! So, who are you?
Jordan Horowitz: My name is Jordan Horowitz. I’m a filmmaker. I write, direct and produce movies. I have two feature films at the moment, one is a documentary called Angel of Nanjing that was released last year and I have a new film called Painless, which is a narrative film that I wrote and directed, finishing its festival run now. It should hopefully be coming out soon. Watch Angel of Nanjing now.
Awards:
- Angel of Nanjing: Best Documentary at the Phoenix Film Festival, Catalina Film Festival, Big Apple Film Festival, Long Island International Film Expo and New Jersey Film Festival.
- Painless: Audience Award, Filmfestival Kitzbuehel New Vision Award, Cinequest Film & VR Festival.
Stephen: Great. So, let me just go back to the beginning really quick. So, where are you from originally?
Jordan: I am from Stamford, Connecticut. I moved around a lot after high school. I kind of left Stamford after high school and never really went back. I spent time in LA, in Colorado, Boston and China and here in New York.
Stephen: How did you get into filmmaking? How did that all start?
Jordan: It was definitely something I always wanted to do my whole life. A friend of mine reminded me not long ago of this time when we were kids running around with this garbage VHS camera and this super hot light filming a Christmas carol for whatever reason and then the light touched my head and burnt me, creating a huge mark on my face.
Yeah. It is something that I’ve always been passionate about and wanted to do. I didn’t know if I could do it until college when I went to film school in Boulder Colorado and finally started getting my hands on real film equipment and seeing if I actually able to tell a story which fortunately I think I am. It’s funny though, today a kid would never have that problem. 8-year-old kids have an iPhone with an amazing HD camera and the editing software built-in so they can figure out if they’re able to be a filmmaker or not before they’re even in middle school. Not in my day. You kind of had to wait for a little bit!
Stephen: After you finished film school did you want to be a writer director, or did you have a path that you wanted to go into?
Jordan: Well, I always wanted to be a writer/director. My thesis film in college did really well and won a bunch of awards. I moved to LA right after on the basis of that film, this DP who was in the process of gearing up to shoot a feature saw it and asked me to come work for him in the camera department. I thought camera departments were probably a path to directing. I didn’t really know. You don’t at that age. I was like, yeah that sounds like a good path. I really want to work on a real film set so it was great.
The thing I love and miss most about the camera department is I was also doing the slates and as the person doing the slates I was the closest person to the actors. It’s funny, traditionally a lot of crew members aren’t really into that. I would just stand there and look at every single take and what the director would say to them and how we made adjustments and just really study.
I had to do the work in the camera department to get us to that point where they called action but then I felt like my real education started once I heard action and before I heard cut. That’s when I was like doing my own personal work I just really enjoyed that experience.
Stephen: So, you worked in the camera department. When did you have your first taste of directing?
Jordan: Well, I was in the camera department for a while working on a bunch of Indie films. I learned a lot of things to avoid, like bad directing but you know I was always making my own short films on the side and whatever money I had left over after paying my rent I put towards short films. So, I was teaching myself and after a while I built up a really good portfolio.
I then helped a friend of mine start a company in Denver. We were doing a lot of music videos and TV commercials. He did all the producing and I did the directing, editing and shooting. Then I sent my reel into MTV in New York and they loved it. So, they hired me to be a producer, editor and shooter. I moved to New York, which is a city I always wanted to live in. I was more excited about being in New York than LA at the time because I felt the types of films that I want to make came more out of New York. So, I moved there and I was a producer on MTV for a while. I knew pretty quickly that I needed to make the jump into making my own feature films. So, I saved as much money as I could and made as many contacts as I could.
My first professional directing gig was when I left MTV. I went off to China to make the documentary, Angel of Nanjing.
Stephen: So, you actually relocated for the film?
Jordan: Yeah. A friend of mine showed me this article about this guy in China who saves people who try to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. This bridge is a very popular place to do it and I was so inspired by what he was doing and I was like really hungry for a project.
I never considered myself a documentary filmmaker but I was like, man this story is just so compelling I have got do this. I was really intimidated to just get up and move to China. I knew nothing about living in China. How do you even do that? What is life like there? How do I even get around? I recruited a buddy of mine –Frank. I knew he was really hungry for a project and I was like, look man I’m moving. I’m going to China to tell this story. Are you in or out? He looked at it and he’s like let’s do this so we pulled our money and resources and on a dime, we literally just moved to China and figured our way around there.
Stephen: Wow! Did you speak with, Chen Si, the central character, before you left? Did you make some kind of arrangement or did you just go?
Jordan: We spoke to him through a translator who wasn’t that good so I would say the communication was pretty poor. We found this blog online. It was in Chinese and I had a Chinese friend who took a look at it. It was a record. Every time he saves some body he writes about it.
I don’t think it was clear to him what we were trying to do. I think he was used to getting a lot of press and a lot of interviews. He thought that it was going to be for a couple days or whatever, I don’t think he realized that I was going to go out there and film him for a year. More detail in the video and audio interview.
Stephen: So, Angel of Nanjing took a year? You filmed for a whole year?
Jordan: Well, yeah. I mean it wasn’t every day but it was on and off. When things were going on we filmed. That is, when he was at the bridge (Yangzte). There was definitely lots of downtime. I had to leave the country every 2 months to get a new visa but yeah, I mean it lasted a year. More details in the full audio and video interview.
Stephen: It’s a beautiful film. What would you say motivates him, what’s driving him?
Jordan: He’s an immigrant to the city. A staggering number of people who were killing themselves on this bridge, the majority of them were also migrants. More detail in the full length interview.
Stephen: Do you enjoy the writing process?
Jordan: No, I’m not a natural writer. Not a Stephen King who can just sit there banging out ten books at a time. Writing is a very tedious and slow process for me.
Stephen: Tell me about your new project Painless.
Henry Long who has a real medical condition where he can’t feel physical pain and tries to find a cure so he can feel normal. More detail in the video and audio interview, including awards won so far.
Stephen: What do you find the most enjoyable part about making a film?
Jordan: For me it’s being on set. I feel like everything is about getting to that point where I’m on set. Writing takes forever and it’s that banging your head against the wall kind of feeling. Pre-production takes forever. There are fun moments in the editing room but the actual post production processes are tedious and then after post-production you’re trying to sell the movie that’s like this awful process to deal with.
You can spend three years working on the movie and the actual production is four weeks. I wish it was the other way around,
Stephen: Have you directed theatre? I was thinking today. I could see Painless as a play.
Jordan: I think it would work as a play for sure.
Stephen: What drives you?
Jordan: An idea pops into my head and then it literally becomes an obsession. More about this process in the video and audio interview.
Jordan also discusses the relationship between his films and the characters in those films and his own life.
As a final question, Stephen asks Jordan who he would like to meet and the questions he would like to ask that person.
Watch the video or audio interview for the answer!
Interview concludes.
Credits Angel of Nanjing:
Initial release: March 27, 2015
Directors: Jordan Horowitz and Frank Ferendo,
Music composed by: David Majzlin
Producers: Jordan Horowitz and Frank Ferendo
Cinematography: Jordan Horowitz, David Ding and Frank Ferendo,
Editors: Jordan Horowitz and Alison Sherman
Synopsis and credits Painless:
Synopsis
Henry Long was born with a rare condition that leaves him unable to feel physical pain. Life for him is a daily struggle, never knowing when he might become seriously injured without realizing it, or worse, die from an internal injury he never knew existed. He lives in a constant state of fear and is completely alienated from those around him who cannot relate to his daily struggles.
Barricading himself in a world of science, Henry has dedicated his life to finding a cure so that he can one day know what it’s like to feel ‘normal.’ When he discovers a promising drug that he is unable to obtain on his own, he gets involved with a dangerous scientist with a dark past and his own secret agenda. Henry must decide if his need for normalcy is worth paying the ultimate price for before it’s too late.
Based on actual medical science, Painless looks at the dark side of life with a rare condition and the challenges both symptomatic and social that people with these conditions face.
Initial release: March 2, 2017 (USA)
Music composed by: David Majzlin
Cinematography: Liam Le Guillou
Producers: Jordan Horowitz, Anthony Ambrosino, Nicholas Delmenico,
Follow @ideaxm @jordansfilms
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Credits: Stephen Spender interview, text, and audio.
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On Instagram: @ideaxme
On YouTube: ideaxme
Find ideaXme across the internet including on iTunes, SoundCloud, Radio Public, TuneIn Radio, I Heart Radio, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more.
ideaXme is a global podcast, creator series and mentor programme. Our mission: Move the human story forward!™ ideaXme Ltd.
