Meet Santiago

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Santiago a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Santiago, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?

Self-care is one of the things that has evolved the most in my life, first I started to try self care things that I saw online, on instagram reels, YouTube, etc… and so as time has passed, I’ve come to find the ones that actually help me to relax and evolve as a person. The self care thing that has helped me the most being journaling, it’s also the hardest because it demands honesty from myself to myself and that can be hard, to see everything (ideally) you’ve done in a day and how you feel about it, now that the day is over. It’s a powerful exercise that has helped me realize what I do on a daily basis and I’m able to detect what I’ve done on the good days and what I’ve done in my bad days, so that I can find what helps me to have a nice day. And having at least one coffee a day.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I’m a filmmaker, I consider myself more a writer than a director because I would write things for someone else to direct but I would only direct things that I’ve written. One of my great hobbies and passions has been philosophy and so I try to implement it into my stories and characters by writing situations and dialogues that bring up questions instead of answering them while also making it entertaining and fulfilling as a viewing experience. Thankfully I can say that my two favorite stories that I’ve done are the latest two I’ve written, one of them has already been filmed and it’s being finished in post-production in order to be sent to festivals, it’s a romantic film set on a coffee shop where a writer facing creative block ends up falling in love with the cafe owner. That script is about grief and love, and it became my favorite set experience. The second story that I briefly mentioned is about to be produced, in fact we’re launching the crowdfunding campaign in the next few days, this new project is about a Vampire that lives in Los Angeles trying to become sober (not drinking blood straight from humans) but the new love of his life that he found on a dating app wants to become immortal and in order for that to happen he must suck her blood. I’m very excited about this new project and would love to have your support, I’m going to be uploading a lot of content from the preproduction all the way to production on my social media @love.filmmaking on instagram.

As you can tell from this two stories that I’ve mentioned I’m very interested in relationships and character driven stories and adding philosophy into that equation I can say that I’m fascinated by people and I believe that while observing others and learning from them we learn more about ourselves, at least I have personally learn a lot from movies and my intention is to do the same for others. To create meaningful work that will make you look inside yourself and discover who you are in order to live a better life. Why do I like this? Why I don’t like this? Films are more than just entertainment.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Philosophy. Mythology. History. I think that this three things are what have made me who I am today, through the study of philosophy, mythologies and history from different cultures I’ve expanded my horizons and ideas to levels I had never expected at my 20 years of age. Be curious, there’s something to learn in everything, I would say that whatever you choose to do you should do it with all you’ve got. Life is short and it moves fast, spend your time doing something you enjoy and that helps you become better and more empathetic. When it comes to an art as social as film I do believe that all filmmakers have a social responsibility as to what they’re putting up on screen and in order to achieve it in the best way possible I think that studying different ideologies and cultures is the best way to do it.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

This is a question that I’ve been reflecting on for quite sometime now, my grandmother passed away this January and a good friend of mine passed away last September, he was 20 years old and in a month I’m going to be older than he will ever be. I know that I will die and everybody that I know will too, there’s no way to avoid that and I’ve known this from an early age and so I’ve reflected a lot on this. I wish I could say that I have a conclusion, an answer to this eternal question, but in reality what I can say is that I live everyday as if it was my last with the expectation that I will have many more, meaning I do something everyday that I enjoy while also doing things for tomorrow, for the next week, things that years from now will benefit me. I think this is the best we can do. Memento Mori. If I knew I only had a decade left I would travel a lot, I would read, I would have my favorite foods, I will be with my family and friends telling them how much I love them, thankfully I can say that I do this as much as I can, while being hopeful that I will experience the gift that aging is.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @love.filmmaking
• Youtube: https://tr.ee/8rMvyW6BXP
• Other: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/santiagocamarena