We recently connected with Tristan Ortiz and have shared our conversation below.

Tristan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

One of the most meaningful and personal projects I’ve ever worked on was only just last year (2022). It’s a short film titled “Baila Conmigo”. The story centers on a teenage Puerto Rican-American boy who doesn’t feel like he quite fits into his extended family because he can’t speak Spanish, therefore pretty much segregating him from the others.

His mother, who is his best friend and only confidant, attempts to push him to get involved and hopefully come to realize that family is family no matter what. Over the course of the film a rift begins between the mother and the son when the son makes a startling discovery but is through love and selflessness that their relationship can be mended.

Over the last few years my mother has been diagnosed with the autoimmune diseases lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. In laymen’s terms she’s constantly in pain due to her body’s immune system attacking itself causing joints, muscles and bones to become inflamed. There is no cure for this and people diagnosed with these diseases often need to take chemotherapy medicine in order fight the disease. This goes on for the rest of their life and at worse case scenario they can die due to organ failure.

Film is like a form of therapy for me. I use film as a means to express ideas, thoughts, concepts, even trauma, in ways that I feel like I can’t in other forms of communication. To watch a film of mine is to step into my head for a brief period of time and feel the way I feel on certain matters.

My mother’s diagnosis wasn’t any different. I wanted to express how I felt about it and though it is not as urgent and severe as the diagnosis in the film is, it still reveals a piece of me. On top of that I also wanted to express how I felt about the Latin American diaspora in which I find my identity as a Puerto Rican-American and how that has shaped who I am.

There’s so many behaviors and cultural norms in the Latin community that almost never get shown on screen. Facets of sexism, colorism, machismo, identity stripping, and a misguided mindset that “you’re not really Spanish” if you don’t speak the language- all plague the culture in the shadows.

“Baila Conmigo” was a way to express and bring to screen how I felt about great many things all at once. So many aspects of the film are so personal that it’s almost embarrassing but it is through this vulnerability that we find we have a lot more in common with our neighbors than we think.

Tristan, 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?

Storytelling has always been in me for as long as I can remember. I would write short stories and create little amateur comic books (most of them just Star Wars fan fiction) but the urge to move people in an emotional way through stories was always there.

Film was a craft that was introduced to me very early on in life by my father who had a solid stint as an actor in New York when he was my age and was an editor when I was very young. I remember being given an old camcorder that only shot in black and white, unknowing of the entire world and history behind the device I was just having fun with. The love for the medium only blossomed more with films like Star Wars, Back to the Future, and pretty much anything Spielberg directed. It’s hard for me to believe that I actually didn’t take becoming a film director seriously until I was in high school.

From that point on I made it clear to myself that I was going to commit to this industry and I’d do whatever I could to be a part of it, hopefully in a big way, as all filmmakers hope for.

I think I come from a very unique background in terms of telling stories mainly due to the different perspective I have on life and how “late” I am in the history of cinema. A young Puerto Rican-American born in New York, raised in the sunny state of Florida, whose had both parents to support him, raised in the church and who has a mix of Americanized culture along with Puerto Rican, it’s a type of lens on the world that hasn’t been seen too often in reality let alone on screen. Stories from the latin subcultures and the diaspora are few and far between with “West Side Story” being a notable exception.

Growing up just in time for the democratization of filmmaking has definitely had a profound stamp on how I view the craft. I hear from all my idols and heroes that the best way to make your mark is to make movies about “things you know” which is inexplicably a vague way to say tell the stories that matter and have meaning to you. All projects I do have some meaning to me in a personal way, they are all pieces of me that I find difficult to express otherwise.

Making films… is very very VERY hard. It’s a miracle that any get made let alone one that gets made with your name on it. You endure hardships, long days, sacrifice a lot of time to dedicate to it. It’s not a solo sport, it is a team effort. So many different people with different opinions, different world views and perspectives all stake their claim in the art to conjure up the end product you see on screen. Filmmaking excites me because I get to collaborate with all kinds of people to hopefully create something good. It’s not always glitz and glamor, far from it actually, but in the end of it all the craft of it is what wakes me up in the morning.

And the thing that makes it all worth it for me, the thing that gets me the most proud, is when people come up to me or message me telling me how a film I worked on with an amazing team of people inspired them or moved them to tears or was a cathartic release for them because it reminded them of their life. Changing people for the better, that’s what cinema is all about.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

There’s a very good line from Steven Spielberg’s latest movie “The Fabelmans” that I think completely encapsulates the life of a creative. It’s from a scene that happens early on in the film in where the teenage Sammy, the main character who has found a love for film and film directing, encounters a rather eccentric character in Uncle Boris.

In the scene Boris explains to Sammy that no matter what he does or how hard he tries to juggle the two “family and art- it will tear you in two”.

And… he’s right.

I’m at stage in my life in where many friends of mine have achieved wonderful life milestones: buying a house, getting married, having a kid, settling down with a good paying 9-5 job. And for many of them this is what gives them purpose, it’s what’s meaningful for them and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Many of them look at me and ask why I don’t focus on achieving these things. Why is it that sit on these life achievements to focus on something that may or may not happen? And it’s because as a creative your art is not something that comes and goes, it’s not something to be suppressed or discarded or ignored; it is the very life blood of who you are. It compels you. It wakes you up at 4:30 in the morning to write that story. It’s what brings the tears out when watching a movie on your own that you relate to when no one is with you.

Art isn’t something to do, it’s a way to live.

But the pursuit of art comes with a heavy sacrifice and that sacrifice is an easy life. Settling down, finding love, stable job. You can have all these things while pursuing art, yes. But it won’t be handed to you. And juggling the two lives of family and art can become a messy business. But you will live your life with no regrets.

This is the philosophy I stand by as a creative. Art isn’t easy. But no one said it was supposed to be.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Flashback to a younger me (not that much younger though). I had just graduated college and I flew back home from Los Angeles after spending my final semester there and I was on the creative high. This was back in the spring of 2019. My plan was to save up money for a car and move back out to Hollywood where I’d work my way in any way I could. I had contacts I made during my time out there and I was revved up to hit the ground running.

I applied to be a Studio Page at Paramount Pictures in the very first weeks of 2020 and to my complete and utter shock I passed on to the interview stage. I now had a flight and hotel booked for Hollywood and I felt like I was going to soar in those interviews!

Covid lockdown. Just days after I got the call.

Like the whole world thought, this thing was gonna blow over in a couple weeks, a month at most and we’d get back to normal. Boy how naive we were.

2020 was one of the most depressing years of my life. I felt like my dream had been completely smashed to pieces but forces outside of my control. What could I do? I sat around for months sulking and angry.

Well, just because you’re not in Hollywood doesn’t mean you can’t get involved in the film industry. I had to pivot my plans that allowed me to get involved in the film industry here in Florida. And to my surprise the industry here is a lot more robust and involved than what many people give credit for.

Fast forward to today and I’ve worked on dozens of projects in various roles from feature films, shorts, commercials. I’ve now directed 3 films and dozens of network cable ads as a commercial producer for an ad agency. My network has expanded 10 fold from where it was, and I now get paid to do what I love.

All of this, because I wouldn’t let my circumstances defeat me. Never let your circumstances push you to give up. Stop comparing yourself to others success and find your own success. All it takes is a simple decision and it can change the course of your life and where you are.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vimeo.com/user108766014
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tristananthonyortiz/
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10357766/?ref_=tt_ov_wr