Who would have imagined how far a China-made digital 4MB SD card palm camera could take a young dreamer’s filmmaking dreams?
In the case of Anthony Diaz V, a Filipino American actor and filmmaker, it is quite far indeed.
Before he was 20, the brawny Diaz has completed dozens of short films. His independent filmmaking spirit has been evident early on with his multitasking, taking on screen writing, directing, producing, acting, and editing duties. By the time he reached 20, he has already graduated at the University of Las Vegas Film School (UNLV), making him the youngest graduate in the history of the program.
In 2012, he put up a film production company called Kaizen Studios in Las Vegas, USA. The following year, he established a satellite studio in Shibuya, Japan.
Now at 26, Diaz is promoting his debut full length film entitled Break, which had a private screening in Japan in April. It will soon hit the Philippine shores before it heads off to Sundance Film Festival early next year.
The film is a unique blend of American storytelling with Japanese cinema infused with hip-hop. It revolves around the alienation and angst of Japanese American lad who is thrown into the underworld while he deals with personal issues as an outsider trying to fit into Japanese society.
It is, in a way, a throwback to Diaz’s childhood when he was watching movies that wouldn’t strike a chord with children his age. He was like a misfit then, as his character in Break is. There is a need to find his place in an environment that isn’t very welcoming. Then he loses the girl he loves and the downward spiral begins.
“It’s the first time to my knowledge that a film has simultaneous English and Japanese language throughout the movie with supporting subtitles. But most importantly, the overall theme is of a foreigner trying desperately to fit in. It is what most of us have experienced in some form or another,” the young filmmaker says.
On screen and in photos, Diaz strikes you as a kind of millennial James Dean, but this time a rebel with a cause, and with a more relatable Liam Neeson-ish vibe. In the movie Break, he even does breakdancing in one scene. Clearly, Diaz is the new kind of screen hero who has a good head to match the well-toned physique.
And somehow, you sense that there is a tenderness that lies beneath the swagger and the action star gait.
But Anthony assures that the similarities between him and his movie character end there.
“The movie is not autobiographical at all. It’s actually inspired from a short film I made when I was 17 years old called Lunch Break, which I shot with my high school friends in Vegas. The premise of the story is similar, but I expanded the universe and characters against the backdrop of Japan,” he points out.