James Di Martino

BIOGRAPHIE

Director|Producer Writer, director and producer of Social Shorts and ACCTA finalist short film ‘Five O’Clock’. In 2019 James completed the low budget feature horror film ‘The Faceless Man’ which premiered at Monster festival. The film has had its international premiere at the Haapsalu horror festival in Estonia,(the sister festival to the prestigious Talinn BlackNight festival). Since its international premiere,The Faceless Man took out 7 awards at MUFF which included Best Director and Best Film. The film also played at the Revelations film festival in Perth and in 2020 ‘The Faceless Man’ was a candidate at the AACTA film awards,the most prestigious film event in Australia. As of now The Faceless Man is currently represented by the U.S based sales agency Hewes Pictures. The feature film has since been released on several streaming platforms in America and the world. These streaming platforms include: Amazon Prime, Vimeo on demand and Tubi Director Statement Disability And Us As a writer and producer with diagnosed disabilities of PTSD clinical anxiety and depression and dyslexia. I wanted to make a film about being disabled being treated differently like being a lesser class. I wanted to make a film about my dad who I looked after as teen career, a man who is still mentally ill. I wanted to make a film about the way people looked at my grandfather when he had a stroke and his loss of mobility. I've watched a lot of abled people tell our stories for an aspirational reason and do well in the festival circuit but their films lacked nuance of lived experience and they barely scratch the surface . For City of Salt to bring the script to life it was important to me to have creatives in front of and behind the camera with disabilities. I was lucky enough to meet James Di Martino, a talented multi award winning director and producer writer who identifies with being deaf. He was as adamant as me to have the film starring actors with disabilities. Yianna Pandelis is an AACTA nominated actress who identifies as being deaf. After a year of searching I found Belinda Aitken who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy really helped shape the script offering insight as to what it was like to be cared for and for her amazing contribution we gave her an ep credit. We wanted to make a film about us starring us. Directors statement City of Salt is a statement about disability, a powerful riveting story written by someone that completely understands the subject matter. The simple nature of its plot, the dark sexual comedy followed by tragic undertones and an optimistic ending echoes everything I wanted in a short film. It was especially important to keep the run time at a brisk 5 minutes, to never be boring and to constantly keep the viewer interested in what they are watching. This was something Myself and Llewellyn spoke about often. The importance of getting to the point of a scene and moving on quickly. Llewellyn has based this short film on personal real life experiences to showcase what it's like to have a disability. The name of Jans is a symbolic name of Llewellyn’s disability and named after his grandfather who had a stroke. The name is used in most of his writing, very much like how legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman used the name Alma in most of his screenplays. The character of Jans is played by Belinda Aitken who has a real-life disability, shows the different life she lives compared to her daughter/ carer (depending how you view the film) Annabelle. This stark construct between the two is made very apparent by Pauly who chooses to leave the house than help Jans get back into bed. The stigma of what Pauly does is also a metaphor for how people in general find it easier to just run from a situation that is overwhelming than choose to do the right thing. Furthermore, the film's ending is such an optimistic take where the climax shows young kids setting off fireworks with nothing but innocence in their eyes. A reflection on the lost childhood by Annabelle and a life Jans never got to live. To bring the characters alive the choice was made exceedingly early to select an actor with a real-world disability to play Jans. Belinda contributed to her character by providing further insight into mannerisms and day to day lifestyle. Yiana Pandelis has a real-life disability of being deaf. Yiana and myself (I am considered to have moderate hearing loss) came to an understanding on the importance of getting deaf actors and artists to tell interesting stories. Yiana was chosen for the role of the daughter Annabelle after her great performance from the feature film Unsound. The idea was to frame the story around her while keeping Jans as a secret until the second act. The role of Pauly was a tough decision and one were quite a few actors turned down the role due to the harsh subject matter and slight nudity. Alexander Lloyd was selected for the role after his performance in the play ‘How about that money’ where he displayed excellent comedic timing and acting ability. The idea was to stage this film with the backdrop of poorer living suburbs of Melbourne lifestyle. The directing style used was to try and create a film-like look, we thus used anamorphic lomo lenses to evoke this era. The film's colour palette further enhanced the film style of dark reds, warm light and sodium greens.

FILMOGRAPHIE