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

Joan, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

When you make films, everything you do is mixed with your own life. And when you participate in projects that transcend the screen, even more so. That is why being able to direct the short film I DON’T WANT TO BE A HERO has been a privilege and a great responsibility.

The project is about childhood cancer and was born from the association MUA Solidaris, which raises money for research into childhood cancer. The story starts from 4 real boys and girls who suffered from cancer, like many others, while we follow the experiences of Guille, a 10-year-old boy who is diagnosed with cancer.

Adapting subjects like this to film is not easy, and even less so when behind them are the real lives of children and their families, some of whom overcame the disease and others who did not. The respect and care to show them on screen was maximum, and the filming took on another dimension because the children themselves, families and associations were involved until the end. Is when the fiction becomes super real.

It’s a project that aims to make this minority disease visible and raise all the money possible for its research, so it’s much more than a film, it’s hope, family, love and, ultimately, life.

In a shoot between professionals and family, this project will always be in me because of the importance of what we were doing. We have always faced it with ‘hope’ as the key word, and wanting to put the point of view on the child, because we wanted the children to see the movie and come out of it thinking they were going to get away with it.

It is important that cinema gets social, but if it also gets charitable and humanitarian, it is a must that everyone go watch it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started in the world of arts when I was a teenager, writing novels, which I never finished, but which did show my need to tell stories. This, added to the obsession I had with cinema and films, made me think of writing stories for the audiovisual: becoming a screenwriter.

From the script, I evolved to consider directing the entire project, and after being successful with the first short films, I stayed on as a director. A director who mainly worked with the script, and with the actors and actresses, giving more importance to the literary and interpretive part, than the technical part.

In order to speed up my learning, I could have spent the money from the studies to make a film, but I preferred to do the degree and the master’s degree.

The most essential skill to have was the determination to solve all the problems (professionally and life) that comes with wanting to dedicate yourself to the cinema, and to be tenacious enough to not give up until you achieve it.

The main obstacles from learning more are always the lack of opportunities with which young people have to face to grow in cinema, where the most difficult thing is to get access the wheel of the industry in meaningful roles.

I’m proud of having directed 14 short films, when most of the people gets desperate after the 3rd or the 4th. I think I’m lucky because what I like to do and my way of making cinema have instinctively a commercial approach which connects with people and audiences.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

A director is basically someone that has something to say because if cinema doesn’t speak up, you are losing a precious opportunity. But even if you have a lot of things to scream, to do so in this crazy expensive art that cinema is, having them is not enough. You will need three pills: the pill of patience, the pill of faith, and the pill of dealing with frustration. Take one of them every month all your life.

Nowadays, we have our head full of dreams and very ambitious goals, because that’s what the older generations and the standards of living put in our heads, and they are incredibly difficult to achieve. It’s like running a marathon where on the sides you have people throwing to your feed massive balls to make you fall. And you have to keep running and avoiding these balls for a lot of years, which most people is not capable of or willing to.

Probably you don’t know the Catalan situation in my country, but I’ve been raised in a situation of repression and I have a huge sensitivity for injustice. So which stories am I interested in? I always try to use cinema as a tool for denounce and criticism of real life events. Raising awareness through the audience and interpellating change with its catalyst power. If you watch my films you will see my social focus. I usually work with real stories and realities from our world that need thorough examination. Sometimes, setting a blurry line between fiction and reality.

The story can also live in the world of fiction and imagination to send its message. For example, in one of the movies I have written, I’m interested in stressing the importance of Art as the key element for the survival of our species. We are usually told that intelligence is what makes us different from other beings. But robots, probably a reality in the next 50 years, will have better intelligence. It’s not it. Emotions are not either, as animals feel in a very similar way. It’s the capacity of creating something new what defines our species.

I am here in Los Angeles because it is the best place to achieve the balance that I follow between the artistic and authorial side, as is the work of an author; and the commercial side, as is the work of a businessman. Always having in your mind that if you are doing a film is to tell something valuable to the world. As an artist, I feel personally connected to this goal in a world full of needed revolutions.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

A dangerous habit: working all the time. In the artistic careers, where usually you organise your own time and tasks, it’s important setting clear goals and don’t stop until achieving them. It becomes something more personal than professional, mainly at the beginning. If it’s not personal to you, if you don’t need to do a movie, to tell a story, to say something to the others, then it will be incredibly difficult for you to live working or to work living. Both worlds will be merged during a long period of time and it’s not the most pleasant or easy ways of living. To survive, you have to feel it. Nowadays, in the Arts, it’s a matter of surviving this long period until you get inside the industry wheels. Then, little by little, the days where you can choose and separate work and life will come and you will have succeeded.

Obviously, it’s a dangerous road, because the line of a workaholic is thin and full of greys, and you need a strong mind not to lose yourself. You have to merge your personal and professional lives, but keeping with you the capacity of ceasing when you decide it’s time to put an end to it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joanpauls.com
• Instagram: @joanpauls
• Facebook: @joanpaulsfilm
• Linkedin: @joanpauls
• Twitter: @joanpauls
• Youtube: @joanpauls