TONI LOPEZ: For KVCR News, I’m Toni Lopez. Today, I’m speaking to Briana Navarro and Mariana Lapizco. Both are former KVCR interns and now are staff members. The two have taken their production background and experience to the next step… founding the Ella Film Festival, an event that aims to support and encourage women filmmakers. Hey guys!
BRIANA NAVARRO: Hey, thank you for having us.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: So happy to be here.
TONI LOPEZ: We’ll get into the festival in just a second, but first, how about some background? You both have experience in filmmaking. Mariana, you work with First Nations Experience, aka FNX, and dedicate your work to amplifying marginalized communities. What got you into filmmaking?
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Honestly, I feel like filmmaking has been there since I was a kid. My first memories are watching VHS films of the golden era of Mexican cinema with my great-grandparents and always them asking, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I would always say, I'm going to be an artist. I didn't know the words then.
I just knew as a kid, I always wanted a camera and just be filming around with my phone. I had a phone since I was a little kid. I'm connecting all adults back.
I'm like, oh, that makes sense. It was always there. I started as a business major, and then I transitioned into film later on because of some friends that got me into some projects.
And that's kind of the short story of it.
TONI LOPEZ: And Briana, you’re a TV producer here at KVCR, and lead a ten week course for high school filmmakers in the Spring. You also have worked to foster a strong community for women in film. Same question, how did you get into filmmaking?
BRIANA NAVARRO: Very similar. I started very young. I've always been attracted to the camera.
I've always wanted to hit record and take pictures of everyone. I was a photographer when I was like, I started 10 years old. And my mom got me like a plastic camera, video camera.
So I've always been attracted to the camera and sometimes in front of it too. And I used to love directing my cousins. But for me, when I was little, it was always just, it was called video making.
I used to make like little movies and little video makings for YouTube. But I didn't really see it as becoming a career until I got older. And then that's when I thought about being a YouTuber or an actress.
So I didn't get into acting until like my junior year in high school. But I didn't really take it seriously career-wise until college, until I got here. I was too lazy to take the placement test for college because everyone in high school, my senior year, was doing the placement test to get into a four-year college, right? I was too lazy.
I'll admit that. So I was like, ‘You know what? I'm just going to go to San Bernardino Valley College.’ I was a little embarrassed because Valley College had a bad rep back then. But when I attended, I was interested in the, it was radio, television, and film at the time. And when I took my first class, it was acting and directing. That's when I really fell in love with like the whole medium.
And like, I was not only interested in acting, but I fell in love with directing. And also because I like telling people what to do. But I didn't know there was a job for it and that's like ADing.
So I got to play around with each of the roles and really found out what I was best at doing and found out what I was not best at doing. But yeah, like I started very young and attracted to cameras. I still am attracted to cameras, but yeah.
TONI LOPEZ: Both of you founded the Ella Film Festival with two other women, Marlene Clara and Monet Sprague. Why did you create a film fest for women?
MARIANA LAPIZCO: We didn't have one in the Inland Empire and I feel like we've always known that it's a male-dominated industry and we love to work with them, but also I feel that, you know, representation has grown when it comes to women and I know that many want to do it. Some of them are afraid, some don't know how to get into it.
And how it all started, I went to the Sundance Film Festival with FNX. We usually go every year for press. And I met a friend. Her name is Arianna and she hosts the women's film festival in LA, that's called Mira La Film Festival and I invited Brianna.
I was like, ‘Hey, I met this friend. I think we should go to this film festival.’ And then after the festival, we were having a conversation, Brianna and I, and she said, we don't have something like this in the Inland Empire.
BRIANA NAVARRO: I was really thinking, I was like, we don't have one in the Inland Empire, right? I was like, why don't we make one? And she's like, yeah, let's do it.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Let's do it. And so that kind of got it started and then Briana got us all together and then we had our first meeting in 2024 and then the rest is history. Now we're a couple days away from the festival.
BRIANA NAVARRO: Yeah, so it's really just wanting to build a space and a platform for women to join together, right? Women and non-binary filmmakers, just because we don't get highlighted as much and we really want to highlight the voices and their visions to just build a community, build a stronger community and hopefully our community can expand and start building other communities throughout the Inland Empire and beyond. So yeah.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: And having women characters or women leads written by women. Because a lot of the time, there are stereotypes. And, you know, so we wanted that authenticity for it.
TONI LOPEZ: Going into a bit of the history that you mentioned, when was the moment that brought this all from being like just an idea to becoming a reality? Like ‘we are making a film festival’.
BRIANA NAVARRO: There's so many moments. Like every now and then we're always like, ‘dude, we're really doing this, like it's happening’. But I kind of remember the first time, was it like, I don't know, like when people started following our page maybe and like reaching out to us.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Yeah, when we posted our… so we made an Instagram a long time ago, but neither of us, the founders, were following it because we were still in the planning stages and how we were going to make everything happen.
And then we created a reel for Instagram with the title of the film festival. And that's when it's like, okay, guys.
BRIANA NAVARRO: That's when it hit us, like there's no going back now.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: When it hit us, like there’s eyes on it. As soon as we posted that, we got our first sponsor, who we already had planned to reach out, but they reached out to us first.
And we were like, I told Briana, I was like, dude, remember that sponsor that I wanted to reach out to? They reached out to us now. And so it worked out and we were like, okay, this is real. People are getting to know the festival. People are talking about it.
BRIANA NAVARRO: We're getting excited.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: And so we're getting excited. There's no going back. Yeah, it's real now. We're going to make it happen.
TONI LOPEZ: Were there any challenges you all faced when putting the event together? If so, how did you overcome them?
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Definitely, I feel the funding is always a big part of the challenges when it comes to making an event, especially when it's your first year.
And the way we overcame those challenges, it was leading into community and into a network of relationships that we've built along the way and in each other's career trajectory. So the power of community is what's making this come to life.
BRIANA NAVARRO: Yeah, luckily, we already had a lot of people supporting us from day one and already trust built.
We built that trust relationship with them. So they right away wanted to invest in this passion project of ours. So luckily, we were expanding from our relationships that we've already built here at KVCR and from being students at San Bernardino Valley College.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: And other organizations that we've been a part of outside of campus as well.
BRIANA NAVARRO: So we've been very lucky with that.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Yeah, we're so grateful.
TONI LOPEZ: What are you most excited about for the event coming up?
BRIANA NAVARRO: I'm excited for people to see each other's films and see their films on the big screen.
Yeah, just to network and mingle with everyone. I'm excited to meet the filmmakers of the work I’ve seen, of because it's really amazing work. I'm excited to network with them as well.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Seeing new faces. Some of the filmmakers we don't know and so we're excited to see them. Honestly, I'm excited for just the festival overall to happen and come to live. It's one thing to plan the whole thing but then there's this excitement when you see it in front of your eyes and I'm excited to see that.
TONI LOPEZ: What is something that came out of this project that neither of you guys anticipated? Like you couldn’t expect, like ‘Whoa, this is the result of all the work we’ve put in.’
BRIANA NAVARRO: There's so much hype. I think it's been getting a lot of hype so far, right?Towards the end of it.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: Yeah, people being excited or talking about it or asking us about the festival, just having random people reach out to us that we've just never expected.
BRIANA NAVARRO: Because I knew it was going to be a little harder in the first year, right? Because you're first starting out, people want to see what you're planning to do and they want to see you do the work first before they participate. But like, just seeing people already so excited and already showing support, it's blowing my mind because it's like, yeah, we're actually doing this. Yeah, they're excited. Cool. They're going to come.
Awesome. That really kind of blew my mind because I thought we're going to have a slow first year, which is normal, but we're doing pretty well for this first year. And that I'm really proud of us for.
TONI LOPEZ: This festival is aimed to help women in film. What advice do you have for women going into the film industry?
BRIANA NAVARRO: It's okay to test out every position. You don't need to know what you want to do right away.
And I'm speaking that from experience. I went to San Bernardino Valley College for five years. I didn't graduate until after five years because I wanted to test out every single class and I wanted to test out every single position.
And because of that, I created a feature film. I wrote, directed, and edited a feature film. And I was the first student to ever do that at San Bernardino Valley College.
And I'm a woman to do it. So that was pretty cool. And just finding out what I'm not good at, meeting people, and allowing them to be that missing puzzle piece that I need for the roles that I don't particularly know how to do.So yeah, just finding my niche.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: I think definitely owning who you are and being authentic because I think that brings it into your stories; your background, your experiences. I saw this video, speaking of the niche, it's like people [were] like, ‘find the niche’.
And I spoke about this in another interview, it was like you are the niche because we all have different experiences. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different personalities.
And then we come together as a collective to create something that's bigger than ourselves. And so each person brings something to the ring that nobody else will bring. And so that's what makes you, you. And that's what will go into the stories. And it's powerful.
BRIANA NAVARRO: Yeah, each person has a story to tell.
TONI LOPEZ: All right. Those have been all my questions. Mariana, Brianna, thank you guys so much for your time today and having this conversation.
BRIANA NAVARRO: Absolutely, thank you so much for having us.
MARIANA LAPIZCO: We're so grateful for this opportunity. Thank you so much.