Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kari Angelica Peña. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kari, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Something I recently got to do was create a sort of “mini” free film festival of my own. I called it “An Evening of Shorts.”
The idea began from me wanting to screen my own short film, “Like a Promethean Curse”. If you’ve seen the film, you know the runtime is quite short. Six minutes short. I would’ve felt crazy to rent out an entire venue for one six minute thing. So that’s when I decided that it would be fun to curate some local (and international) independent short films to join my own film.
I was lucky enough to gather three other fantastic shorts that the filmmakers (Reggie Azwar, Daniel De Santiago, and Aidan Barringer) graciously shared. I scoured for somewhere to host this event and I was led to the Salt Lake Public Library. From there, I made the flyers, did the promotion, and planned the rest. I had no expectations for what the turnout would be in order to save myself from heartbreak, so you could imagine my surprise when the time was 6:40PM and I looked out into the audience.
The rest of the night ran incredibly smooth. The films got some great reception and the Q&A portion was really fun. Something that I kept on repeating throughout the night was how much I thought community events like these are really important. Why can’t a twenty three year old independent filmmaker just create a community film festival of her own? Why leave it to the big dogs? To me, it’s important to find your people in film- and I think that events like these should be more accessible to artists. Not everyone can afford $100+ dollar filmmaking workshops or tuition for film school.
I hope to do more of these events in the future. All I want to do is uplift local filmmakers and I think I finally found a way to do it.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m a writer/director trying to find my footing in this film industry, as many others are. Some of my recents works are doing their rounds at some festivals. “An Unsweet Fix”, my capstone film from my senior year of film school was accepted into the Utah International Film Festival! It’s premiering January 9th, 2025 during the “Crossroads of the Soul’ block.
I’m also delving into creating a film festival with my partner in love and life, Justin Mathis. We’re hoping that “An Evening of Shorts” is something we can make happen every year.
I wish I knew what was coming in the next year, but for now all I know is that I’m going to continue do to what I love. All I’ll say is to expect another film out of me sometime soon. The pressure will push me to work on something new, haha.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Being in a theater and looking back to see an audience watch something you poured your heart and soul into is something that has always been so incredibly rewarding to me. Having something from my brain be on the screen and is just there for people to see? I mean, that’s crazy. But extremely gratifying, thats for sure,
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
The film “Amélie” is a huge one for me. My oldest sister introduced it to me at a young age and I think the whimsy of that film made an imprint on me in a really big way. It’s definitely a film that I will always go back to for inspiration. It’s one of those movies that I just find perfect in every single way. If you haven’t seen, I highly suggest you watch it. It’s one you can learn from on a filmmaking level and on a life level in general.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kariangelicapena.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kariangelicapena/
