From CSUN to Cannes in One Take

So how did you spend your summer vacation? Traveling? Hiking? Making a movie so good it was selected from thousands of competing works for screening at the granddaddy of film festivals—the one in Cannes, France?

“Yes,” said director Spiros Stathoulopoulos, who recently completed his major in CSUN’s highly respected cinema and television arts program, where he studied with professor Temma Kramer and others.

Stathoulopoulos traveled to Colombia in summer 2006 to shoot “PVC-1,” based on a true story about a Colombian woman who could not pay criminals’ hefty ransom demand and wound up with a time bomb made of PVC piping around her neck.

He shot his movie in one continuous 85-minute take. “I had to train for three months to be able to support the weight of the steady-cam for an extended time,” said the affable Stathoulopoulos, who wrote, directed, shot, financed and produced the film himself.

Stathoulopoulos transported his own steady-cam equipment, hiking uphill, downhill and splashing across the river near a rural village site about two hours from Bogotá.

His effort paid off at Cannes. “PVC-1” was screened there in May 2007. Out of thousands of fledging efforts, Stathoulopoulos said, it was among only 22 chosen for the Director’s Fortnight—the section of the festival where film luminaries Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Sofia Coppola stepped into the international spotlight.

After the screening, according to a Hollywood news journal, talent agents were hot on the young filmmaker’s heels. Eventually, he signed with the Endeavor agency.