Frank Varga

FRANK VARGA JR.
filmmaker / filmworker

cinema is dead, long live cinema

FEEL. '23

DOCTOR / A live session music video for Gnome Chimpsky shot at Meteor in Windsor, ON in November '24.

MURMURS OF A DISTANT PLANE / A diary film shot during the 2024 solar eclipse in the midst of totality. Coming soon.

MEANWHILE / An album release music film made for Cons of Jupiter profiling a proper punk spirit show they threw in a pal's basement November '24.

GET ON WITH IT / A music video for HUTTCH shot in Detroit, MI summer '23.

THERE MAY BE SOMETHING HERE / A short film shot in Brooklyn, NY summer '23.Our mentor Bela Tarr was about to have a retrospective at the Lincoln Center in New York and we had both been largely unemployed and creatively stagnant since the films we made in Budapest earlier that year; we decided to make a film. My friend Josh and I started thinking up themes, ideas or anything that could get the ball rolling. Love story we thought? Okay? But what about the incredible oddity of the whole damn thing. The way love seems to just appear despite all scientific odds countering its existence. One sleepless night later and we had a draft of something and began casting.Furthering our strange engagement with chance, we began discussing actors who might work for the film—during a long meandering Facetime audio call Josh mentions the name of an actor who he's discovered through the Brooklyn scene. Someone he'd love to work with at some point. Monica Sanborn. I stop and think. Why does that name sound familiar? It dawns on me. Holy shit. It can't be. It feels nearly scripted—nearly too good to be true. Of all the billion actors in New York the first name Josh shares with me is someone from hometown?? I laugh hysterically and explain the situation... our casting ends immediately. No backup names. No other considerations. The universe gave us Monica and that's all we'd ever need.With a few things maybe possibly solid but nothing even remotely confirmed, one of my best pals Shane Chiasson and I avoid going out for beers and leave Windsor in the dead of night. New York City here we come! Driving non-stop for hours on end we reach the New Jersey turnpike, stir-crazy and sleep deprived. Windows down, we blast "Woke Up This Morning" by the Alabama 3 on repeat and yell "Christophaaaaa!!" at one another. Then the New York skyline presents itself to us. We've arrived. It's time to get to work.In between night time shenanigans we slowly prepare for the shoot. We gather our tiny but mighty cast and crew and even scramble together a snack-sized budget for our little film that could. We align all our schedules, meet with our actors and location scout. Finally, the day arrived. We took to the streets of Brooklyn and shot. No lighting, no fancy equipment, only the frenetic chaos of Brooklyn engulfing us all. And somehow, about 10 hours later we wrapped. The entire film done, dead and shot. Off to the edit. A long tired drive. Back home to Windsor.

APRIL DOESN'T HURT HERE / A short film made of images collected throughout Canada and Slovakia in late summer '22. Poem by Jack Kerouac.

WOMAN, WAITING / A short film shot during an international masterclass led by Béla Tarr in Budapest, Hungary winter '23. Cine Daniel Misota

MY LAST FILM: OR HAPPY TIMES WILL COME AGAIN SOON / A short film shot for the price of two trespassing tickets.World Premiere "Going Nowhere: Three Velocities" Tlaxcala3 Gallery, Mexico City

THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR / A short film shot in June 2020 during the height of pandemic lockdown frenzy.A family meanders in a suburban backyard during the peak of summer. As the day slowly turns to night, they must face an anxiety that has been avoided.This is a project that came about without much of a plan. In earnest, shortly before making this my entire life was completely uprooted by the pandemic. Having returned back home after years of being away, I was beginning to feel the annoyances and ennui from not having my own space. What made this even more challenging was that I had completely fallen out of love with my camera at the time, the Canon 5D Mark II. For stills it was fantastic, but the shitty compressed video codec made it feel completely uninspiring for video work. With ample free time and a desperation to get out and shoot something I started playing around with open source project, Magic Lantern, which enabled RAW video recording on the camera. Following a very simple technical test, I was genuinely blown away by the results and immediately became inspired to shoot something with the camera.Following ample brainstorming, I came up with a broad set of themes and ideas I wanted to seek out when shooting. Armed with these concepts, I strolled into my backyard and started shooting. I quietly composed images as my family went about their day paying zero attention to me whatsoever. While I knew these moments would certainly work together, at the time I really didn't know how. There was no narrative, no central focus, only a handful of frames that reflected the ideas I was interested in at the time. Even as I assembled all the footage into a Premiere timeline I still had no idea what the film would be about. It wasn't until I stopped trying to be so damn smart and simply began to reflect and feel. After that, I had a rough cut within a few hours.World Premiere RIDM 2022 National Short Competition, Montreal
Eyes Under The Rose Petal Official Selection, Windsor
Minute Shorts Official Selection, UK
Cinema Variety Hour VIII, Toronto