Director Bio
Frankie Latina (Writer/Director)
Born: 14 July 1978
Birthplace: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Italian American independent film director, producer and screenwriter Frankie Latina was born
in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The son of counterculture parents, he was raised by his two sets of
grandparents, immigrant entrepreneurs on one side, and labor union activists on the other.
Latina’s unique upbringing exposed him to the inspirational and contradictory values of the
American dream.
Using his Uncle Dave's Super 8mm camera, he began making movies when he was a teenager. Latina worked as a sales clerk in video rental stores across Milwaukee, shooting experimental films on the weekends with friends and family members. Eventually he crossed from experimental work to narrative filmmaking. He studied film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is a graduate of MATA cable access. Latina aspires to explore the dark experiences of contemporary life and transform them into a phantasmagorical escape for his audience. Latina's attitude can be summed up, in part, in his statement: "Filmmaking is my only weapon against impermanence.”
Filmmaker Magazine, “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” 2009
Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists 2009
Director Statement
For me, cinema enables audiences to escape into a better - or at least more interesting - reality. My work is inspired in equal parts by my
upbringing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with its desolate streets and abandoned buildings and unique color palate, and by the films that
have most transported me: "exploitation" films, French and Japanese New Wave and 1970's Hollywood. Story lines and concepts come to me
from a combination of life experience, focused daydreaming and meditation on the work of photographers like Helmut Newton and
film-makers such as Jean-Pierre Melville, John Cassavetes, Stanley Kubrick, Jørgen Leth, Francis Ford Coppola, Wong Kar-Wai, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, and Wes Anderson. Regardless of the genre in which I'm working, my goal as a film-maker is to transcend and transform reality, and to create an intense and unique cinematic experience that lingers with the movie-goer long after he or she has left the theatre.
