Chicago IL (Milwaukee Premiere)
In a dystopian future, a safety inspector keeps watch over a residential unit in Cleveland,Ohio. She is always there. She never sleeps. She is always watching. It’s for your own good.
Director | Writer | Artist | Filmmaker
Cassie Llanas is a queer Latinx award-winning filmmaker currently based in Chicago.
In another life, they are a working actor in New York City. In another other life, They're saving tigers and other large wildcats from extinction. However, in this life, they have major stage fright and enough scratches on their arms from trying to tame their house cat.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Cassie is the youngest of eight children. Yes. Cassie has seven siblings and YES they have a complex about it! They grew up making webcam videos with their friends starring their Beanie Babies and Star Wars action figures. They watched movies that were WAY too scary like Night of the Living Dead and Scream, but it was the only way to spend time with their older siblings whenever they were home. That fear of horror movies developed into a stockholm-esque relationship where now, Cassie can't get enough of them.
After studying Cinema and Media Culture in Minneapolis, MN, Cassie moved out west to Los Angeles with dreams of working in Hollywood. For seven years, they worked in Television and Film production on shows like How to Get Away with Murder, Transparent, Twenties, etc learning from amazingly talented people. Their love of filmmaking only grew and over the years they knew they wanted to be a director but didn't have the time or money to build their portfolio while working in production. When the pandemic hit, productions stopped and Cassie, like everyone in the film and television industry and most people around the world, found themselves out of work and knew it was time to make a move.
They moved back to the Midwest to be closer to family and started attending the DePaul Film and Television Directing program as a Masters Candidate. Their experimental documentary Hello Depression won the DePaul Premiere Film Festival and has screened around the world. Their other short films: Lavender and Phantom Heart have gone on to win and screen at several festivals around the United States including the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival.
Cassie now teaches editing and creative producing at both Elmhurst University and DePaul University and has several projects in development.
As a filmmaker, Cassie enjoys crafting cartoonish worlds that make you laugh one moment before ripping your heart of your chest, throwing it on the ground, and crushing it beneath the heel of their boots the next….before making you laugh again through the pain. They call it Traumedy?
Director Statement:
When I was five, my brother sat me down in front of the TV to watch one of his favorite movies- Night of the Living Dead. (He hates when I tell this story but it ended up being quite a defining moment for me so he can just deal.) I was terrified!! And by the time poor Johnny gets his head bashed in by a rock in the graveyard by a zombie, I was scarred for life.
With my siblings being much older than me (I'm the youngest by ten years), I ended up watching a lot of movies I was probably too young to see like: Jaws, Scream, The Ring (Thanks Dad), and many more on-screen nightmares. What resulted was a years-long crisis of being unable to fall asleep in the dark, in the quiet, alone, with only the images of those movies keeping me company- that is until, through some form of Stockholm syndrome, I started falling in love with the idea of watching something that terrified me. I started to dare myself to watch a scary movie playing on TV to see how long I could last -I would call my friend Lindsay, hyperventilating, as I walked her through what was happening at the end of I Know What You Did Last Summer, or I'd leave a spiraling voicemail to my friend Phil while I watched the beginning of Shaun of the Dead, or I'd accidentally punch my friend Sam in the face when she scared me while we watched Amityville Horror. It started to become fun and what was once a casual thrill became a passionate love affair. I consumed horror movies, adoring originals, admonishing remakes, and idolizing those that dared to be different or new.
The script for Lost Boys Pizza had me hooked on page one. Tati did such an amazing job crafting the world, that all I could think while reading it was “I want to direct this” and in our first notes session together (we were in the same writing class our first year of grad school), I told her exactly that. Two years later when I was embarking on my thesis film, I reached out again and said “hey, remember how I said I wanted to direct Lost Boys Pizza? Here’s a sizzle reel and look book, please let me direct this” and I think that caught her a bit off guard, how much her script stuck with me. But, of course, in a genre that’s been dominated by straight men with very little studio acknowledgement of the existence of women or queer people as avid horror fans, I had never had the pleasure of watching used tampons repurposed as a weapon against vampires and WHY THE HELL NOT? Her script was littered with opportunities to showcase camp on screen and I was lucky that Tati let me take this wacky wild story and run with it- all the while trying not to slip on any tampons in my way.
Running Time: 14 minutes
Comedy/ Horror
Comedy/ Horror
Saturday, Sept 7th 7PM
Avalon Atmospheric Theater
2473 S Kinnickinnic Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207
Avalon Atmospheric Theater
2473 S Kinnickinnic Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53207
Director Bio:
Cassie Llanas is a queer Latinx award-winning filmmaker currently based in Chicago.
In another life, they are a working actor in New York City. In another other life, They're saving tigers and other large wildcats from extinction. However, in this life, they have major stage fright and enough scratches on their arms from trying to tame their house cat.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Cassie is the youngest of eight children. Yes. Cassie has seven siblings and YES they have a complex about it! They grew up making webcam videos with their friends starring their Beanie Babies and Star Wars action figures. They watched movies that were WAY too scary like Night of the Living Dead and Scream, but it was the only way to spend time with their older siblings whenever they were home. That fear of horror movies developed into a stockholm-esque relationship where now, Cassie can't get enough of them.
After studying Cinema and Media Culture in Minneapolis, MN, Cassie moved out west to Los Angeles with dreams of working in Hollywood. For seven years, they worked in Television and Film production on shows like How to Get Away with Murder, Transparent, Twenties, etc learning from amazingly talented people. Their love of filmmaking only grew and over the years they knew they wanted to be a director but didn't have the time or money to build their portfolio while working in production. When the pandemic hit, productions stopped and Cassie, like everyone in the film and television industry and most people around the world, found themselves out of work and knew it was time to make a move.
They moved back to the Midwest to be closer to family and started attending the DePaul Film and Television Directing program as a Masters Candidate. Their experimental documentary Hello Depression won the DePaul Premiere Film Festival and has screened around the world. Their other short films: Lavender and Phantom Heart have gone on to win and screen at several festivals around the United States including the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival.
Cassie now teaches editing and creative producing at both Elmhurst University and DePaul University and has several projects in development.
As a filmmaker, Cassie enjoys crafting cartoonish worlds that make you laugh one moment before ripping your heart of your chest, throwing it on the ground, and crushing it beneath the heel of their boots the next….before making you laugh again through the pain. They call it Traumedy?
Director Statement:
When I was five, my brother sat me down in front of the TV to watch one of his favorite movies- Night of the Living Dead. (He hates when I tell this story but it ended up being quite a defining moment for me so he can just deal.) I was terrified!! And by the time poor Johnny gets his head bashed in by a rock in the graveyard by a zombie, I was scarred for life.
With my siblings being much older than me (I'm the youngest by ten years), I ended up watching a lot of movies I was probably too young to see like: Jaws, Scream, The Ring (Thanks Dad), and many more on-screen nightmares. What resulted was a years-long crisis of being unable to fall asleep in the dark, in the quiet, alone, with only the images of those movies keeping me company- that is until, through some form of Stockholm syndrome, I started falling in love with the idea of watching something that terrified me. I started to dare myself to watch a scary movie playing on TV to see how long I could last -I would call my friend Lindsay, hyperventilating, as I walked her through what was happening at the end of I Know What You Did Last Summer, or I'd leave a spiraling voicemail to my friend Phil while I watched the beginning of Shaun of the Dead, or I'd accidentally punch my friend Sam in the face when she scared me while we watched Amityville Horror. It started to become fun and what was once a casual thrill became a passionate love affair. I consumed horror movies, adoring originals, admonishing remakes, and idolizing those that dared to be different or new.
The script for Lost Boys Pizza had me hooked on page one. Tati did such an amazing job crafting the world, that all I could think while reading it was “I want to direct this” and in our first notes session together (we were in the same writing class our first year of grad school), I told her exactly that. Two years later when I was embarking on my thesis film, I reached out again and said “hey, remember how I said I wanted to direct Lost Boys Pizza? Here’s a sizzle reel and look book, please let me direct this” and I think that caught her a bit off guard, how much her script stuck with me. But, of course, in a genre that’s been dominated by straight men with very little studio acknowledgement of the existence of women or queer people as avid horror fans, I had never had the pleasure of watching used tampons repurposed as a weapon against vampires and WHY THE HELL NOT? Her script was littered with opportunities to showcase camp on screen and I was lucky that Tati let me take this wacky wild story and run with it- all the while trying not to slip on any tampons in my way.
No comments:
Post a Comment