We recently connected with Lynnette Cabrera and have shared our conversation below.
Lynnette , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
Being an older, disabled person of color and a woman, filmmaking opportunities are something I have to conjure up on my own. I was just on a film set as a producer but the director treated me like a glorified craft service production assistant despite the fact I shared with him that I don’t want to feel invisible on set especially as a producer and/or director. It was also my first time without my service dog who I lost to cancer last year.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After my partner of 34 years had a near death experience, we both realized that life is short. It has been a running theme in our lives after the death of our daughter and we really buckled down to attend to our homestead and art. I attended film school at 50 years old, in part because our daughter never got to be anything other than a memory. I had already spent years writing essays about living in a small town and founding a kid’s rock band when our son was in fourth grade. You can find that journey chronicled on Facebook under Stop, Drop & Rock! The essays are being compiled into a book called, Too Loud For A Small Town. We have also spent years running a music & film camp for local kids called Rock ShopZillah! After the pandemic we took a break from that endeavor and purchased a baby capybara, Antonio who we have devoted much time and resources to training him and featuring him in music videos. I’m about to launch a fundraiser for his next project. Music videos are a passion project that we started with former members of our original kids band. We have several Xmas music videos under our belt. I’ve also written a feature length film that showcases our island home and Antonio in a post-apocalyptic feel good movie.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I am powered by sheer will. My doctors have often taken a look at my test results and asked me how I am standing upright when everything shows I should be supine. So just managing my health is a daily challenge. I went from a decade of being housebound to driving to film school which entailed a daily roundtrip commute of 150 miles to Seattle and back to our island and two ferry rides. As business owners our main income comes from a contract vendor agreement with an island business which is no guarantee of steady income and we rely on our art to make up the difference. We continually are in production of recycled bottle glasses, capybara cards and stickers and kinetic sun sculptures to sell in our local Farmers Market. I also make seasonal wreaths in Autumn & Winter which can be found at Wild & Luscious Wreaths on Facebook.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
So since we got Antonio the capybara, our capybara content online has made our social media take off. We went from about 500 followers to over 5000 with our business account reaching over 600,000 accounts currently. This is the first time we have the numbers to be able to launch a successful crowdfunding effort for our next music video. This does take a lot of time, effort and consistency but it’s also very fun.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://equinoxproductions.myportfolio.com/equinox-productions
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/equinoxproductions
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RadioRockShopZillah?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
art.by.siege Siege Lehman