Creative Thought Space |
Francisco Joaquín Paparella | Mexico City, México | www.vimeo.com/sudestern IMDB
Director, Writer, Producer, Río Azul Films

What do you think being creative means?
Being creative is the skill of using a thought process along with the abilities of the person till all the resources possible are seized, to find in that singularity a fissure. An escape out of the commonplace. And be able to finalize that process transforming the idea into a language: literature, film, medicine, architecture. It could be applied to everything. Being creative is the capacity to diverge, of taking the incorrect option. Fromm says: “creativity requires the value of letting certainties go”. There is in the creative instinct a power of destruction above the presets that conduct you to act.
How do you include creativity in your life?
I always try to be open to the impulses, to induce myself with things that shake me. To be hungry for music, art, for singular people, honest people who have something to tell. That’s what moves me to sit and write. To burn.
What thoughts do you have as to how your life has influenced your creative imagination, and how your creative imagination has influenced your life?
Being hungry to try everything in my scope and to perfect myself as an artist has made me what I am. Fortunately, I could manage to make it that my creative imagination and my life feedback themselves into my work.
What, if any, exercises do you do to get into a creative mode?
I like to strangulate the idea through thinking, till I finally asphyxiate it. Just then, I sit and write. The exercise is the writing itself. Sharpen the idea till the blade can open the belly of a trout with just one cut.
How important do you think creativity is in life?
Being creative gives you the opportunity to be closer to freedom, like having an amplitude of debris (possibilities) to hold onto if you were in a shipwreck.
Being creative is the skill of using a thought process along with the abilities of the person till all the resources possible are seized, to find in that singularity a fissure. An escape out of the commonplace. And be able to finalize that process transforming the idea into a language: literature, film, medicine, architecture. It could be applied to everything. Being creative is the capacity to diverge, of taking the incorrect option. Fromm says: “creativity requires the value of letting certainties go”. There is in the creative instinct a power of destruction above the presets that conduct you to act.
How do you include creativity in your life?
I always try to be open to the impulses, to induce myself with things that shake me. To be hungry for music, art, for singular people, honest people who have something to tell. That’s what moves me to sit and write. To burn.
What thoughts do you have as to how your life has influenced your creative imagination, and how your creative imagination has influenced your life?
Being hungry to try everything in my scope and to perfect myself as an artist has made me what I am. Fortunately, I could manage to make it that my creative imagination and my life feedback themselves into my work.
What, if any, exercises do you do to get into a creative mode?
I like to strangulate the idea through thinking, till I finally asphyxiate it. Just then, I sit and write. The exercise is the writing itself. Sharpen the idea till the blade can open the belly of a trout with just one cut.
How important do you think creativity is in life?
Being creative gives you the opportunity to be closer to freedom, like having an amplitude of debris (possibilities) to hold onto if you were in a shipwreck.
About
Francisco Joaquín Paparella was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1984. He moved to Patagonia at the age of five, and he spent his whole childhood and adolescence in a mountain valley. He left his hometown at the age of seventeen to study in the CIEVYC film school in B.A.
After his degree, he moved to Mexico City in 2007 to live and work there. In 2009 he established his independent production company Río Azul Films, through which he produced in México FINDE, directed by Matías Penachino, and ÁNIMA from Antón Terni. In 2010 he executive produced ENERO, from Cynthia Gabrenja and Marcelo Scoccia. A trio of operas primas with presence in international film festivals.
In 2012, he directed QUITRAL, a short film about a Chilean going up to the mountain to his parent’s lands. The film was awarded Best Director & Script in Festival Audiovisual of Mercosul, and selected in competition in San Francisco Latino Film Festival 2013 and Lakino Berlin FF 2014. In 2013 he directed, wrote and produced ZANJAS, his first feature, in the Argentinian Patagonia. A portrait of Zamora, a rural worker, in a town suffering feminicides of teenagers thrown into ditches once dead. The film premiered at the Raindance Film Festival London in 2015, it was also selected in Guadalajara Construye 2015, and won the 2nd Prize in Guanajuato International Pitching Market 2014.
Paparella is now pursuing his most ambitious project yet, SUDESTERN - a modern western based on a true story, about Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid living in Patagonia in 1901. The project won the Park Avenue award at the New York Screenplay Contest 2013 & INCAA’s subsidy for first and second films.
Walking a thin line between realism and fiction Paparella is defining his style and identity as a director. He strongly believes in the power of sordidness and viscerality as a way of telling stories.
FILMOGRAPHY
2016. SUDESTERN. In development
Project Winner of the INCAA’s Subsidy | Project Winner of the Park Avenue Award at the New York Screenplay Contest 2013 | Project Winner of INCAA's Contest Raymundo Gleyzer 2012 | Project Selected in INCUBADORA GUANAJUATO FF 2012
2015. ZANJAS. 75 min. Director, Writer & Producer
RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, Indies Americas. London, 2015 | GUADALAJARA CONSTRUYE Selection Guadalajara FF 2015 | FLICC Post Production Award Mexico 2014 | Guanajuato FF 2nd WIP Prize Guanajuato 2014 | Special Mention Festival Audiovisual of Bariloche Bariloche 2014
2013. QUITRAL. 16 min. Director, Writer & Producer
BEST DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY Festival Audiovisual del Mercosul, Florianapolis Brasil 2013 | BEST SHORT Film Festival of Mountain Films Ushuaia SHH... Argentina 2013 | BEST SHORT Festival Audiovisual de Bariloche Argentina 2014
Francisco Joaquín Paparella was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1984. He moved to Patagonia at the age of five, and he spent his whole childhood and adolescence in a mountain valley. He left his hometown at the age of seventeen to study in the CIEVYC film school in B.A.
After his degree, he moved to Mexico City in 2007 to live and work there. In 2009 he established his independent production company Río Azul Films, through which he produced in México FINDE, directed by Matías Penachino, and ÁNIMA from Antón Terni. In 2010 he executive produced ENERO, from Cynthia Gabrenja and Marcelo Scoccia. A trio of operas primas with presence in international film festivals.
In 2012, he directed QUITRAL, a short film about a Chilean going up to the mountain to his parent’s lands. The film was awarded Best Director & Script in Festival Audiovisual of Mercosul, and selected in competition in San Francisco Latino Film Festival 2013 and Lakino Berlin FF 2014. In 2013 he directed, wrote and produced ZANJAS, his first feature, in the Argentinian Patagonia. A portrait of Zamora, a rural worker, in a town suffering feminicides of teenagers thrown into ditches once dead. The film premiered at the Raindance Film Festival London in 2015, it was also selected in Guadalajara Construye 2015, and won the 2nd Prize in Guanajuato International Pitching Market 2014.
Paparella is now pursuing his most ambitious project yet, SUDESTERN - a modern western based on a true story, about Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid living in Patagonia in 1901. The project won the Park Avenue award at the New York Screenplay Contest 2013 & INCAA’s subsidy for first and second films.
Walking a thin line between realism and fiction Paparella is defining his style and identity as a director. He strongly believes in the power of sordidness and viscerality as a way of telling stories.
FILMOGRAPHY
2016. SUDESTERN. In development
Project Winner of the INCAA’s Subsidy | Project Winner of the Park Avenue Award at the New York Screenplay Contest 2013 | Project Winner of INCAA's Contest Raymundo Gleyzer 2012 | Project Selected in INCUBADORA GUANAJUATO FF 2012
2015. ZANJAS. 75 min. Director, Writer & Producer
RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, Indies Americas. London, 2015 | GUADALAJARA CONSTRUYE Selection Guadalajara FF 2015 | FLICC Post Production Award Mexico 2014 | Guanajuato FF 2nd WIP Prize Guanajuato 2014 | Special Mention Festival Audiovisual of Bariloche Bariloche 2014
2013. QUITRAL. 16 min. Director, Writer & Producer
BEST DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY Festival Audiovisual del Mercosul, Florianapolis Brasil 2013 | BEST SHORT Film Festival of Mountain Films Ushuaia SHH... Argentina 2013 | BEST SHORT Festival Audiovisual de Bariloche Argentina 2014