WAITING FOR SANCHO World Cinema

How can filmmaking be filmed? The question would seem to have been answered already, given the teeming amount of “making of” featurette extras that cling to DVD packages. But the dirty little secret of “making of” films is that none of them show filmmaking as it is, in the moment of creation. Which is why Mark Peranson refers to his first film, about the filming of Albert Serra ‘s extraordinary BIRDSONG (also playing at this year’s AFI FEST) as “a kind of making of. ” A fan of Serra’s epochal HONOR DE CAVALLERIA, Peranson loved the Catalan director’s work but never imagined that he would be called out of the blue to play Joseph, father of Jesus, in Serra’s new film about the three kings’ journey to Bethlehem. Armed with only a little HDV camera and a built-in mic, Peranson arrived at the production site on the breathtaking, volcanic Canary Islands and shot what he saw during the days he wasn’t acting. When Serra is filming, he’s discovering the film he has minimally sketched out on paper (which we also see); Peranson discovers Serra discovering, his camera more or less invisible, allowing the viewer to sense exactly what it looks, sounds and feels like to be in the midst of a film set run by a serious and generous artist who is reinventing cinema as we know it.