Downtown LA Film Festival 2019: Interview With Zenon Samuels, Director Of SURVIVE

For years, science fiction has always been able to predict (and promptly examine) the role of technology in our lives, filtering stories about humanity, society and our role in the universe within the prisms of unconventional tales of aliens, robots and possible alternative futures. LA-based Australian director Zenon Samuels is another director and writer who showcases a keen awareness of the potential of the popular genre; one of his first shorts Robot, used the titular machines as an avenue to explore themes of alienation and loneliness, predicting the division that would cascade across America within its post-Trump spell.

In Samuels’ newest short Survive, an unlikely trio, comprised of a stoic, gun-wielding veteran (Steve Chivers), a struggling mother (Cait Engler) and a young Muslim child (Hadassah Shaheen) make their way through the forest, hoping to reach an unnamed border, in the midst of a post-war world. As always though, despite the science fiction fringes that linger outside every frame – this past world war seems to have been between actual worlds, not ourselves – this is a story focused on diversity, actively encouraging the necessity to surround yourself, and ultimately learn from, other people who may be different – or think differently – than your own understanding and identity.

Ahead of its presentation at the Downtown LA Film Festival, I spoke to Zenon Samuels about the film’s inception, the casting process, his influences and why science fiction works so well to deliver socially-conscience themes.

Alex Lines for Film Inquiry: Can you tell us about how you ended up in LA and how your film-making experiences have been there so far?

Zenon Samuels: So I ended up in LA in 2016, studying at UCLA extension. I come from Perth, Western Australia and I figured I’d go to LA just for the experience of traveling and to pursue film in the professional sense. The classes are great, I won’t get into the details of that, but they encouraged you to make a film every month or so, which led me to just practice working on projects, working on films and you know, learning editing and sound at a more professional level.

From there, I just spent a lot of time making the films for class and film projects on my own with two short films and a feature film that we kind of lucked into putting together. Apart from that, I mean, there’s so many cool industry opportunities here to just do videography work, commercials, music videos, helping out others with short films or all that sort of stuff. I mean, the filmmaking film experience has been great so far. Just gotta keep that hustle going, to survive I guess.

What was the inception of your short film, Survive?

Zenon Samuels: I try to remain non-political, but it was inspired by the current climate in America. I was in LA at the time of election 2016 or 17 and you could just see like a lot of tension amongst people here and fears about what might happen, so Survive was inspired by that. Putting people from different beliefs – say left or right or middle or whatever – putting them all together and just seeing what would happen if those three people had to work together as opposed to fighting each other.

A Muslim themed science fiction film is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, I attempted to do it back in Australia with a film called Robot, but unfortunately, I lost the drive with all that footage. Survive was loosely inspired by me still wanting to do that storyline, with the eventual goal of turning – even combining the two – Robot and Survive into its own feature film based on the same concepts of race relations.

How was the casting process?

Zenon Samuels: There was a friend of mine, Steve Chivers, who plays the man and he and I worked on some of the projects for UCLA, we hit it off, he’s a good bloke and he’s actually a writer. So he was like, I’ll help you, we’ll sort out the script idea, but from there I was like, you should just be in the film too. Second one was Cait Engler, she plays the young woman and I met her through a mutual friend because she was doing this horror film with another friend of mine. I thought she had a great look and a sense for what the character should be in Survive. And then lastly, for the young Muslim girl, we cast Hadassah Shaheen and I was really grateful because she’s from St Louis and when her family saw the casting online, they were really interested in it so they decided to fly out to LA for it, and for that alone I’m really appreciative that they did that.

What do you hope that viewers take away from Survive?

Zenon Samuels: I think the idea is, you watch a film and you just get a sense of the different sides of an argument. In this film, I tried to suggest that people need to work together as opposed to fighting each other. But at the end of the day, it’s up to the viewer to take away what they want. What I wanted to get out of it was really just an understanding of how political, or any sort of ideas that people might have, might clash when placed in this scenario.

It’s about how people should work together to discuss these things. I had a discussion the other day with a fellow who was a very strong religious person and I myself am not, but just the idea that we could have a discussion about it was appreciated, as opposed to having an argument. We were actually able to talk about it and see our different sides and what we can each take from each person’s opinion. I think that’s just important to have in life, the ability to analyse things and not just go straight for a dismissive or deflective response, to just think things through first.

On first glance at the marketing and general aesthetics of the film, many people would cite District 9 as a direct influence on this film. Would you agree, and is there any others you’d cite?

Zenon Samuels: Yeah, District 9 definitely was a major influence and I guess it has been since working on my old film Robot, as it is one of my favourite films in general. I was also inspired by Monsters by Gareth Edwards, and for the characterisation of the old man, I’d say Gran Torino. Monsters and District 9 were inspirations for the world-building and placing the audience directly into these worlds without much set-up, just starting in in the midst of something without really giving much away.

Why do you think that science fiction has always been a great conduit for social commentary?

Zenon Samuels: I think because it allows you to create these unique worlds that you haven’t seen before. If you have something that might be too extreme, you can put it into science fiction and get away with it in a sense. You can really just go over the top with ideas, themes and concepts that may not seem as real if placed within a grounded/pragmatic reality. Also, if it’s not as real, people maybe are able to accept it more or more so it doesn’t affect them so much. They can be entertained as well as subconsciously get some form of dramatic message out of it.

Are you interested in expanding Survive into a full-length feature?

Zenon Samuels: I’d love to expand Survive into a feature film if the possibility ever arose. As I said before, I’d like to combine the ideas of Survive and Robot into their own feature, which would deal with the same themes. I have the scripts and ideas ready to go if I ever get the chance to adapt them. I’d carry on the same sort of story, but with a budget and more expansive setting, it would definitely allow for a bigger and more expansive universe to play with.

What are you working on now?

Zenon Samuels: I’m currently working on a feature film that I shot about a year and a half ago, which is a mumblecore drama about teenagers running around LA listening to thrash metal music, an idea heavily inspired by my love for Metallica. There was no script on that one, so putting it together has been challenging, as it’s effectively being made in the edit. Apart from that, just working on scripts for a few more films, In fact, I have another film that’s inspired by my love of dinosaurs as a kid.

I just finished my second novel and in a couple of month’s time my band will have a bunch of new songs out, so that’ll be exciting. But in terms of the future of Survive, we’ll be playing at the Downtown LA Film Festival on the 27th of October, and following that, a festival run for as long as we can keep it going. After that I’ll be putting it online onto my website and the links to watch it will be available there.

Film Inquiry thanks Zenon Samuels for taking the time to talk with us.

Survive will be screening as a part of the Downtown LA Film Festival, details about session times and other films playing at the festival can be found here.

https://vimeo.com/231282191