.... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....
Steve Cormier, Alejandro Montoya Marín, Juliet Lopez and Brenden Wedner in a scene from “Biomass.” (Courtesy of Anthony Riazzi)
Persistence pays off – just ask Anthony Riazzi.
The New Mexico-based filmmaker began the project “Biomass” in 2012.
Nearly a decade later, the film premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival last week. The online festival wrapped up on March 30.
......................
“It’s been a really long process getting to this stage,” he says. “We shot this in 2012, and the big issue for this film is that it was very visual effects, heavy. There are 400 visual effects in the film.”
Writer and director Anthony Riazzi. (Courtesy of Anthony Riazzi)
Coming off his independent features “Millennium Bugs” and “Monday,” he looked for a change.
A few years ago, Montoya Marín got the experience of a lifetime when he was chosen to participate in Robert Rodriguez’s TV competition series “Rebel Without a Crew.”
During the show, Montoya Marín and five other filmmakers all had to create a feature-length film with a $7,000 budget. Montoya Marín made the film “Monday,” which was finished in 14 days.
“The Sequel to Monday (Tuesday) is a new graphic novel by Alejandro Montoya Marín.
“I had written the script for the follow-up to ‘Monday,’ and I really liked where the characters were going,” he says. “If I was going to be locked up in quarantine, I wanted to take a chance on a new avenue of storytelling.”