From left to right: Anthony Drazan, Bavly Soliman ’22, Richard Hoover, and Kosaku Horiwaki Kosaku Horiwaki’s filmmaking journey began when he was still a child, in Japan. It began before he came to New York City, at age 19, to study film as an undergraduate; before he decided to stay here, working for two decades in the Japanese television industry; and before he enrolled at Feirstein in 2018 to fulfill his “persistent dream” of directing his own film. His journey began when he was 14 years old and lost his mother to suicide. The loss, he says, “ignited a lifelong quest to capture the enigmatic complexities of the human experience on film.” Horiwaki’s M.F.A. thesis film, Daughters of Monster Magnet, is the embodiment of this project. In it, his main character, Lili Mukaejima, is left with a profound sense of abandonment and emotional turmoil after her mother’s suicide. At 47 minutes, the film is twice the length of a typical thesis project and involves laborious stop-motion animation. The achievement is both personal and professional. For Horiwaki M.F.A. ’23 and his classmates, these films are calling cards, says Feirstein Executive Director Richard N. Gladstein. Wanting to offer students the benefit of advice from a variety of industry veterans, Gladstein instituted a thesis mentorship program when he assumed directorship of Feirstein in 2020. As a supplement to guidance from professors in the thesis class, mentors—one per film—meet with students a few months before shooting begins and then again in post-production, when they see a cut of the movie. Sometimes the mentoring relationships extend further, depending on the chemistry of the pairings. Gladstein assigns mentors to films based on the help students request, anything from reworking the script to directing actors to using animation. In his first year, Gladstein found himself choosing mentors from the filmmakers on Feirstein’s Advisory Council, people like Steven Soderbergh and cinematographer Robert Richardson. He has since expanded the pool of potential mentors so that Feirstein can fulfill students’ wide-ranging needs. A Kindred Spirit Over many months of work, Feirstein students serve as directors, screenwriters, and producers (Horiwaki took on all three roles for his film, but that is not always the case). Students also serve as directors of photography, production designers, and more. Each thesis project has a budget of $25,000 to $30,000, says Gladstein, $10,000 of which comes from the school. Such modest budgets are possible because, with its state-of-the-art facilities, Feirstein also provides equipment and logistical support. Using live-action sequences and stop-motion animation, Horiwaki’s film rejects narrative convention and crosses genres. For shoots on a stage at Steiner Studios, a multinational team of artists created a nutshell world: a small Victorian house, intricate dolls (requiring their own on-set doll hospital), and miniature human silhouettes suspended in the air like birds. This reliance on craft, and stagecraft, is why Horiwaki and his crew found themselves in a room last November brainstorming with distinguished production designer Richard Hoover. Hoover has worked on many films and series—Dead Man Walking, Girl Interrupted, Twin Peaks, The Plot Against America, to name a few—and in the theater. Hoover was a good pairing for Horiwaki’s film, says Gladstein, because the production designer could offer help in how to capture the visual nature of the story. At Steiner, the group spent an hour talking about the visual possibilities of Horiwaki’s film. A stylistic departure from most of Hoover’s projects, the film’s surreal sensibility intrigued him. Horiwaki, he found, “would abstract me into wonderful discoveries of things.” One of Hoover’s suggestions that ended up in the film was the use of cartoon graphics of words to replace firework smoke. And through their discussions, Horiwaki came to see Hoover as a rare kindred spirit, who had been able to maintain that artist’s holy grail: “a childlike sovereignty of the imagination.” Respecting Artistic Visions M.F.A. student Bavly Soliman ’22 recalls the first thesis meeting he and his director of photography, Thomas Heban M.F.A. ’22, had with director Anthony Drazan, on Zoom in late 2021. Drazan, who is teaching a class at Feirstein this fall, is known for his award-winning films Zebrahead and Hurlyburly, the latter starring Sean Penn. “He was very chill, and he started the conversation by saying, ‘I’m not here to critique. I’m here to help,’” says Soliman. “And that was a big relief.” Soliman’s film, which he produced and directed, was complicated by its sensitive subject matter. He offers its logline: “While visiting New York from Egypt, Mark, a 32-year-old Christian-Orthodox [man], decides to lose his virginity, confronting all the cultural and religious restrictions that shaped his character.” With a screenplay by Feirstein classmate Matthew Gill ’22, based on a story the two developed, Soliman describes the film as bold. But it was the one Soliman, who is originally from Egypt and relocated to New York City in 2017, felt compelled to tell. Part of Soliman’s development as a filmmaker was gaining confidence in his own artistic vision and learning to express it effectively to others. Drazan encouraged thoughtful introspection. The better Soliman understood his own reasons for wanting to tell this story, says Drazan, the better it would serve him; not just in making his movie, but also in shaping his ambition. “Because you have got to have a reason, in most cases, to launch a career—beyond making a living, being famous, and pleasing your parents.” Premiere Film, an Italian distribution company, has acquired the rights to Soliman’s film, called HoLEY, and is currently submitting it to festivals. Soliman, who also works full time as a pharmacist, is now in the middle of writing a feature based on the short and developing two other shorts. He has plans to film one of those this fall, with Drazan as a producer on it. The two stayed in contact and the “mentorship evolved to a friendship,” says Soliman. Core to the mentorship program, and Feirstein’s programs in general, is respect for the idiosyncrasy of individual artistic vision. “Kosaku’s and Bavly’s movies, they are a little out there in their ideas,” says Gladstein, “but that’s all good.” Summing up Feirstein’s philosophy, Gladstein says, “It’s not the film we want you to make. It’s the film you want to make, and we’re just helping you make it.”
