We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Catalina Querida. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Catalina below.

Catalina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Little Spark Films started in 2013 with a DSLR camera and tenacity. After several short films and 48 Hour Film Races, we met The Pyramid Gallery, an artist who makes Configuration Boxes from the film, Hellraiser, and we started a creative partnership. The little adverts we made for his company inspired the author Paul Kane to reach out to us. Paul Kane is an internationally award winning author as well as the “foremost Hellraiser expert” as said by Clive Barker, the creator of said universe.
Paul Kane’s story “The Torturer” was our first foray into cinematic filmmaking. We met our Director of Photography, Jorg Viktor Steins-Lauss, at Texas Frightmare Weekend after he saw a short we made with Lloyd Kaufman, Founder of Troma Entertainment the longest running independent film studio in N America, and Jorg offered to shoot The Torturer with his Red Camera Suite.
We shot “The Torturer” over one week in May of 2020 on a shoestring budget and it gathered several awards. It is now available for streaming in over 100 countries, 4 languages, and was the catalyst for a new era of Little Spark Films.
Our next project, The Night of The Witch, is a 50 year old script from Lloyd Kaufman of Troma with the story by Stan Lee.

Catalina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Little Spark Films began in 2013 with a point and shoot camera, an old laptop, and determination. We agreed to complete every project we set out to make. After numerous award winning short films, we embarked in new territory with “The Torturer” by Paul Kane. We’re also available to hire for filmmakers to complete their projects and in 2020, we worked on a film produced by Terry O’Quinn, founder of Fangoria, where we were deemed “The Goth Crew From Dallas.” We focus on getting full coverage of any project that we’re on and pride ourselves in getting what’s needed filmed.
Currently, we’re focused on building a studio that shares unique stories from perspectives that are often overlooked.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The entire “Make Your Own Damn Movie” Series by Lloyd Kaufman has been integral to how we move and interpret the outside world. It’s for independent filmmakers who just want to get it done. The series is funny but also full of tidbits from a long career as an independent filmmaker and studio head. We also respect that he focuses on the human aspect of filmmaking and being a creative.
We also enjoy filmmaking extras on physical media releases and essays on filmmaking. Our inspirations are Clive Barker, Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro, and Trey Parker/Matt Stone.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Robert Rodriguez’ Rebel Without a Crew is a fun book that details how he made El Mariachi, but it focuses on how he did everything on his own. We’ve found that working with people is more beneficial for us. You get different view points. You get different sets of knowledge. Definitely making our team bigger has been helpful and has been a force for good these past few years as we’ve been changing and growing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://littlesparkfilms.net
• Instagram: @littlesparkfilms
• Facebook: Little Spark Films
• Youtube: LittleSparkFilms
• Other: TikTok: @littlesparkdfw