Writer / Director: Pablo Stoll Ward | Production: Pablo Stoll / Florencia Larrea | 90 minutes | Color | RED CODE 5K DCP | Co production Uruguay / Chile | With the support form the Production Development Fund 2012 from ICAU (Uruguay).

 

Logline

That summer, Santi met the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, there were zombies everywhere.

 

Director’s notes

The film’s title is a direct reference to those hyper commercial, mega catchy tunes which are played at the beach in the summer. Tunes from which there is no escaping, no matter how hard one tries. There is something else apart from a song from which the characters will not be able to escape in Summer Hit: the end of the world as we know it.

Although the genre is one of the most prolific, there are certain characteristics to the film that I believe will make it interesting.

The first of those characteristics is that the film begins as a summer love comedy which then turns into a thriller which eventually becomes a zombie film. That is to say, the film mutates, just like the characters, who are totally carefree at the beginning but get involved in criminal affairs (theft, a con) until they realize nothing of the former matters since the world is crowded with living dead.

The second is that the zombies in the film turn gradually and are aware of their destiny. Of what they no longer are, of what they shall become, of the way everything will change after they are dead and keep walking the Earth.

The highlights of the film emerge from the relationship between the living and the undead, some tragic yet amusing moments, as Hit is a comedy as well.

Apart from being fun, zombie films include a political factor: the world is coming to an end, and talking about the end of the world means talking politics.

George A. Romero made the best films on the subject.

Summer Hit does not dodge the subject, but, unlike previous films or TV series, the focus is not on the remaining human community and the way it experiences its new reality (with its tensions and syntheses of all the social issues we know about) but on the relationship between humans and zombies who are on the process of becoming so.

In the end, maybe there is not such a big difference between being alive and being dead.

In a wider political sense, Summer Hitwants to be a film in which we, people from Latin America, see ourselves: zombies walking the remote beaches of the Atlantic coast of Uruguay. The apocalypse arrives in the summer, when the beaches are packed with tourists. Summer Hit shows what happens to a Chilean boy on holidays with his cousins and some Argentinian con artists during those summer days.

Besides, there is humor in the fact that everything, even zombies, arrive late in Latin America.

Now: why making this movie?

When it comes to movies that belong to a certain film genre, it is important to remember that those were the movies which we grew up with, the movies we saw on TV as children, at matinee sessions and in video cassettes when we were teenagers.

I can trace back the idea of making a zombie film to the first film I saw on video tape: Lucio Fulci´s Zombi 2, an English-dubbed Italian production full of blood and guts which kept me awake at night for several nights.

Ever since then, those slow-moving, broken zombies that crave human meat have been my favorite monsters.

In addition, I believe that making movies that belong to a genre in Latin America is problematic.

Something that supports what I claim above is that every time a genre is visited, it is for the wrong reasons; whether for drawing attention at a local market or for trying to sell the film in the international market.

In both cases what is neglected is what should never be forgotten when a film, any film, is made: passionate storytelling, the fun of playing the most beautiful game there is, that of bringing dreams (or nightmares) to the screen to share them with others.

There is something else which makes me want to make this film, a personal element.

For the last 10 years I have been making movies which fit in the genre which may be called auteur films.

During that time I was horrified to see that there is a sort of division between filmmakers, those who are auteurs, and those who have a commercial appeal, as if the former could not direct and the latter could not feel.

I honestly believe that those are empty definitions.

There is only one kind of filmmaking, two at best: good filmmaking and poor filmmaking, and that’s it.

I enjoy movies as a filmgoer and as a director, and I am not an auteur, I am a filmmaker, period.

Enjoying Bergman does not prevent me from enjoying Roger Corman, and I believe that we as filmmakers must abolish this foolish division that only serves the market.

We aim at following the model of the 1970s European productions, implementing a South-South coproduction, avoiding going after funds coming from outside the region, betting on an effective distribution of the film within the countries involved in the coproduction.

Writer / Director / Producer: Pablo Stoll Ward | Fiction Feature | Black & White / Color | 95 minutes |  RED 4K / DCP | Spanish Language |  Supported by the Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Boost! Programme by the Binger Institute

 

Logline

DANTE, the former bassist of a once popular rock band, must pull his life together but he falls in love with a married former classmate, and has to cope with his best friend’s ghost. On top of that, nobody listens to cassette any more. Silver Shadow is a comedy about love, music & death.

Silver Shadow has plenty of taped music, sex, surfing, a couple of fights, many jokes and a ghost. Silver Shadow is a black and white comedy about youth lost. That is to say, a comedy about death.

 

DANTE: DANIEL HENDLER/SEBA: ALFONSO TORT/ TÍO: JORGE TEMPONI. ( The leading trio from 25 Watts)