JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about one or more projects that you have been working on or have recently completed. Why exactly do they matter to you and why should they matter to us.
TINA PETROVA: I have newly completed a social justice feature documentary titled
Pain Warriors. An indie filmmaker will often spend between 6 and 10 years of their life on one project, sometimes more. This period includes concept / development, research, pre-production, production and post production/ marketing. Oftentimes, other crew members won’t come on board in a low budget doc until principal photography begins.
As someone who has lived with chronic pain for years, this story was particularly close to my heart. It courageously speaks to the invisibility of my demographic.
Documentarians are a special breed of people. A cause, or perhaps a person’s life, affects us so deeply, we have no choice but to give up all we are doing, in pursuit of something that calls out to our very soul.
The cry cannot be stifled, once heard. It haunts our every waking hour.
JS: How did doing these projects change you as a person and as a creator?
TP: The project you start off making is, more often than not, not the end project you release to the public. This has to do with many factors. One, the filmmaker will often start with a seed, a kernel of something that’s not quite formed. As pre interviews occur and research is underway, a story concept can change hundreds of times, as new information comes to light. Add to the mix your eventual creative partners who bring with them their own keen eyes, life experience and talents. Each one of your key creatives builds on the small seed that you brought to the table initially, adding their own expertise such as editing or music scoring, bringing depth, breathing life into what is not yet born, merely gestating.
In some ways, your key creatives become additional parents or guardians of the eventual picture – they shepherd it through a multitude of growth stages, such as childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. This community of guardians enrich your idea and elevate it to levels near impossible to reach solo.
Pain Warriors was initially titled Pandemic of Denial, referring to the extremely large number of chronic pain patients in North America that are essentially invisible to the wider public. I saw a need, a hole, a gap that wanted a voice. I merely listened, and gave it that voice.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
TP: Being an indie filmmaker is not for the faint of heart. Some pet projects don’t make it to the funding stage, others may get partially shot then abandoned due to lack of financing, and shelved forever. More often than not, additional monies need to be raised in post-production as the project develops a life of its own and its needs change, as a growing child’s needs would organically require things one hadn’t accounted for in the beginning.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
TP: I can’t help but put my heart, my soul, the entirety of my being into a project. I’m an “all in” kind of gal. In most areas of my life it’s all or nothing. I don’t care for half – heartedness in myself, or others.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
TP: Financing financing financing. You may think you have the world’s next Mona Lisa. Funders may not get your concept at all and reject it time and time again. Funding a film is a tricky business. It’s somewhat of a shell game.
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
TP: Carpe Diem! Seize the day or the moment. Some things only come round once. “Waiting” is not in my vocabulary.
Follow your heart. Let it be your North Star. It won’t steer you wrong if you are true to it.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
TP: I started off in the entertainment industry as an actress at age 11. Somewhere in my mid 30’s I was given the opportunity to direct and produce a short film. Once behind that camera, there was no going back. Something magic happened that first directing job. I fell in love with being behind the lens, and never looked back.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
TP: Making films can look like you’re leading a charmed life to an outsider. Aside from film festivals and premieres it’s 98% blood sweat and tears much of the time .
Ongoing stress levels can be through the roof with deadlines, and finding that elusive diamond in the carbon dust is always a challenging puzzle.
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
TP: This film is my swan song. I’ve had a long run in the arts and I’m ready for the next chapter, that has yet to be written. It will probably involve doing a very long self- directed retreat in the CA desert. I have a lot of healing yet to do.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
TP: I think each stage of the way paved the next part of my journey in the arts. I believe that each stage informed what was to come
I don’t think I would change much, except be born into more money! So I could fund pet projects at will and not stress about raising money time and time again. Fund-raising is thankless and can be highly stressful.
JS: Let’s talk about the state of the arts in today’s society, including the forms in which you work. What specifically gives you hope and what specifically do you find depressing?
TP: Seeing a lot more female directors out there gives me hope. The doc industry, at least, is quite gender balanced.
Funding is the biggest barrier to getting great projects made and seen. More endowments to arts, specifically doc financing and grants, are direly needed.
JS: What exactly do you like about the work you create and/or do?
TP: Creating something from nothing is magic. It’s like you are Harry Potter with a wizard’s wand in hand. You can conjure whole new worlds into being. What a super power you wield!
JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?
TP: I guess the most helpful comment about my work is that film can be a tool for healing on many levels in one’s own life and in the lives of those in the audience. It can be a game changer. Press reviews have stated that I have created projects of “faith and healing”. In many ways my projects have informed my personal faith and healing. They have forever changed me from the inside out.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
TP: I’m surprised I’m still standing! I’ve had a hell of a year, beginning with a neck / head injury just before completing the film, that I’m still very much in recovery from. I would have never thought I was capable of surviving what I’ve been through this past year. I had no idea of the strength and resilience that have put the “pedal to the metal.” Each day I wake up, I wonder WHO it is inside me that keeps on going in the face of great adversity. Friends have said it’s the story of my next project, but in the infamous words of the late great Amy Winehouse I say “no, no no, no…”
LINKS
iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/pain-warriors/id1506122098
Google Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Pain_Warriors?id=Ud85kd5e-ZY.P
Amazon Prime:
DVD:
Blu-ray:
Reviews
Internet Movie Database (IMDb),
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8438478/
Distribution
Gravitas Ventures USA
.
PRODUCTION
Pain Warriors is co – produced by Tina Petrova and Eugene Weis.