My very talented photographer friend reached out recently to share his very funny kickstarter project for a short film- a mobster who discovers his intolerance to gluten. And if you’re a 30 Rock fan, you’ll appreciate the cameo appearance!
They've raised $9,000 and only need $6k more with 12 days to go so please go support them!
Turns out Chris is also a photographer and has a series of photos taken around Brooklyn so we asked a few questions about his film & photography...
CHRIS FONDULAS - PHOTOGRAPHER/FILMMAKER
Erin: What are you curious about?
Chris: Stories that pertain to a darkly comical side of life. Yea, dark comedies mostly, but I also have a penchant for the true stories that people never hear about as well.
Erin: What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given and by whom?
Chris: My mother: "Take it easy." Maybe she was telling me to relax or maybe I was being hyper, I don't remember.
Erin: We know you are a photographer...so how did you get into writing and creating this comedic short mafia-esque film noir (can we call it that?)?
Chris: that's exactly what it is! Photography and film are, and always will be the same thing. The only difference (in the old days anyway), is that one has a motor spooling film through at a higher speed and so therefore movement is captured. But being a photographer makes it just as easy to form images in your mind that might move, emote or have an overall outcome. And making up stories has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. So when my wife was diagnosed with celiac disease, I automatically had to imagine what the overall worst outcome of any one story could ever be...and at that moment it was a mobster.
Erin: What would be your budget-less dream project?
Chris: I might have to revisit this thought...probably direct my feature faux-mentary about the search for the world's most perfect massage. And Zach Galifianakis would have to play the lead.
Chris on his Brooklyn Photo Series
Chris: Between 2009-2011 I spent a handful of summer nights shooting derelict and non-sought after areas of Brooklyn that I felt were compelling and needed explanation. Through work contacts in the film industry, I found myself immersed in, and suddenly granted access to, sometimes unknown properties including cement factories, run-down buildings and boat hangers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, abandoned school houses and other everyday properties that would otherwise seem normal, but for some reason, had no longer become of interest and now sat rotting feet from passersby walking down common Brooklyn streets.
Cement Factory, Brooklyn, 2009 - Chris Fondulas
A world of stunningly visual, crippled art forms. It was an unknown void to be given access to and an otherworldly beauty to obsess about. Through this access, I made it a side- preoccupation to investigate these areas, when I wasn't actually working, that suddenly became more interesting when not thinking of them in a modern day context, but instead documenting them through their decrepit state of affairs. A tortured school fatigued from years of neglect, paint peeling off its walls yet visually arresting. Down the hallway to an auditorium seemingly emptied while in the middle of a nuclear attack, the desks still jostled from their way of abandonment. A bulldozer bathed in light from adjacent buildings and rigid with dignity, superimposed under a web of eroding infrastructure. Practically fossilized supports and concrete physical structures, needed for the operation of societies and empires, under-appreciated and somehow stoic. It is this confluence of industrialism, and romance of design, that draws me in.
Photography by Chris Fondulas
