First a very short bio: born in Martinique, French West Indies, I moved to New York when I was one year old (well, my parents moved - and I followed...) I've been a New Yorker ever since and later an American Citizen (whoohoo!)

Like most - or all of you - I've loved movies since childhood and through films found a love for theatre, music and anything artistic or cultural. I started making films in Super 8, then 16mm and of course, digital video.

Below, you'll find details about my first feature, The Golden Ram, and on the following link you can read about my short, 1st Session, - which was actually carved down from a feature film to its current fifteen minute running time - and this link will lead you to my theatre works.

Hope you enjoy!

THE GOLDEN RAM
74 Minutes – 16mm Color Negative

SYNOPSIS 
The Golden Ram is a low-budget satirical-detective-comedy about a private investigator hired by a mysterious Frenchwoman to find a legendary jewel - originally stolen from a Berber tribe in the 15th Century Sahara Desert - which has presently resurfaced in the Manhattan underworld.

The film satirizes such Film Noir elements as convoluted plot, larger than life characters and the power of the female spirit over the male, but also renders homage to the B movie Genre.

Completely self-financed, the project was shot over a period of five and a-half years in Martinique and New York City, adding stills and personal Super 8 & 16mm footage of France, West Africa, the Sahara Desert, Devil’s Island and Cuba for flashback sequences.

Some personal notes about the making of The Golden Ram

The idea for The Golden Ram started with a dream.  No, no, not that kind of dream, not a daydream, a real dream, the kind of dream you have when you are deep in R.E.M. sleep and closed off from the real world.

After ten years of struggling to try to get into the film business – ten totally unsuccessful years of horrible frustration, heartaches, humiliation, pent-up rage, miserable little jobs, border-line poverty, loneliness, despair and severe depression – I knew I had to do something to get myself out of that long dark tunnel and was desperately trying to find out what to do.

From my profound depressive state of mind I woke up one morning and realized that my grandfather, who had died not too long ago, had come to me in a dream that night.

He very simply told me: “Look into the old home movies and family pictures, you’ll find your answer there…” 

I immediately took this dream to be a sign and proceeded to go through all the home movies I had shot in Super 8 – since my brother gave me his Super 8 camera when I was fifteen years old – and some of the 16mm films that my grandfather had shot in the 1950s while he lived in Cuba until Castro came to power and he and his family were forced into exile and found themselves in Martinique.  My grandparents had lived in Cuba since 1928 and had amassed a huge amount of personal photographs and some 16mm color reversal home movies that my mother had preciously kept throughout the years.

Going through all of these family films and photographs, I realized what my deceased grandfather meant in that dream: there was a film to be made here.  A very personal film using my family and relatives and perhaps also a very meaningful film for me since movies had been my entire life since the age of ten.

I chose the best of these family films and photographs and decided to write a story around them.  Due to the quality factor – scratches, dust, overexposures, torn sprockets – I decided to use the footage and pictures as visual fragments during flashback sequences. 

The Detective Film had always been my favorite kind of films (with adventure and comedy movies) and was such a universally well-known genre that it immediately came to my mind to use.  Financially forced into being an independent low-budget filmmaker, I had to make the story fit the Detective B-genre with the same B-style cheap production values.

I also decided to make it a personal film and use photographs of my grandparents and of my mother and uncle in Cuba and somehow make them characters part of this detective story.

Because I had no money certain artistic decisions and personal sacrifices had to be made.

The first sacrifice was my freedom.  Being an artist somehow gives one the right not to have a full time job.  Unfortunately when you’re an independent filmmaker who decides to finance your own film (because no one else is stupid enough to finance it) you need money, lots of money, or, some money in a regular stable way which means a full time job.  With the stability of a full time job also come the credit cards (which are even more important than actual cash).  So I gave up my freedom, with a lot of emotional turmoil, and took my first full time job.

After six months of dealing with an insane boss in the magazine business, I switched to my second full time job (in a restaurant) that paid a little more but more importantly that came with a five week summer vacation from late July to early September.  Five weeks unpaid but still five weeks which gave me plenty of time to prepare and shoot parts of my film.

The script had been purposely written as a no-budget film and also for me to act in as the main character since I had always loved acting and originally trained as one, and I could also not trust any other lead actor to stick with this project for several years.

​To avoid costs, the first draft had only New York City locations. Upon re-reading it I felt that it needed something special, something out of the ordinary, something that low-budget films don’t usually have: an action-filled beginning in an exotic location (just like a James Bond teaser before they go into those fancy titles).

The original setting I had decided on was the Sahara Desert. After budgeting that shoot, I realized it would be too costly and complicated to do.  I then decided to change the location to the only exotic place I personally knew fairly well:  Martinique.  It made sense to the story and it made sense logistically because I had relatives who lived there and could help me with locations and actors and any production problems.

Because I had not yet cast an actress, the beginning of the film had to be filmed from the camera’s point of view of the femme fatale character who was supposed to be in that exotic locale.

A director of photography friend in Los Angeles suggested I use a steadicam artist friend of his who also happened to be a woman.  This made perfect sense.  Since I didn’t have an actress, a camerawoman should “play the part” while filming.

The Martinique Shoot almost ended the entire project.

First, no airline company or freight forwarder wanted to transport the camerawoman’s expensive steadicam equipment to the West Indies so we decided to use a regular 16mm camera.

Second, after having meticulously prepared the “Carnets” for all our equipment to properly enter French Soil, the customs agent at Fort-de-France Airport did not accept these papers – even with the official stamp from the US Customs Office on them – and confiscated all of the camera equipment. 

I spent two nights pacing in my hotel room having the first of many future nervous breakdowns.  After two days and a couple of hundred dollars paid to a customs broker who got the equipment out of the airport, the shoot finally started and finished on time.  I thanked God that the weather held nicely.

Back in New York I spent the first year working at my full time day job and editing the Martinique sequence at night and on weekends.  In the spring, I also started pre-production for the second shoot to be done during the summer.  I decided to do two scenes since I couldn’t afford to do more.

I shot a foot chase sequence on the Queensboro Bridge and a dialogue scene on a Saturday and Sunday in August.  On Saturday morning at 7:00 AM during the first take of the chase I snapped my hamstring in the back of my right leg and was in agony and limping for two weeks. 

On Sunday, the actor playing the Englishman couldn't remember one single line of his dialogue.  I had to feed all of his lines to him from off-screen and later cut out my voice during sound editing.  Aside from all this, the shoot went well.

The second year in production was spent like the first, at my day job and editing both sequences at night and on weekends.  I paid up my credit cards as much as I could during these eleven months and got more pre-approved credit cards in the mail.

Pre-production for the third year’s shoot started in spring and in the summer I filmed another dialogue scene and parts of a tunnel chase sequence shot in the basement of a hospital in Manhattan and in the basement of a building in Queens.  We also did exterior shots in Manhattan, Central Park, and exterior and interior scenes at the Belvedere Castle.

One day in the fall was spent filming the black and white and color stills used during the flashback sequences.

Editing resumed once again during the third year of production and I started pre-production for the Big Shoot. I called this the Big Shoot since I realized that I needed to get this film done because I couldn’t take the pressure of the full time job – that I was starting to hate more and more – and having an unfinished film.

I decided to go heavily into debt to get this over it and followed Francis Ford Coppola’s advice I had read somewhere: “Start shooting and the money will come.”  And he was right: more pre-approved credit cards came in the mail and gave me the financial opportunity to borrow way over my head:  the American Way.

I scouted all the locations on weekends and started getting permissions for them:  the tire repair shop at the New York City Sanitation Department, Grand Central Terminal, the tenement building, the Statue of Liberty, 8th Avenue and 40th Street and the top of the Manhattan Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I also cast the lead actress – without having met her – from a friend’s recommendation in Paris.  I had the set photographer (who lived in France) take photographs of the actress in Paris and mail them to me.  As soon as I saw them, I knew I had found my lead actress.  A New York City casting session had brought up many talented actresses, but this Parisian actress fit the role perfectly.  Everything related to this film was about taking chances and this was just another one.

The Big Shoot during the fourth year of production was completed in seven straight exhausting days.  All the interior scenes with the actress (flown in from Paris) were done in my apartment in four consecutive days; the tenement and interior tire repair shop in one day; the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, 8th Avenue and Grand Central Station in one day, and the last day was reserved entirely for the Statue of Liberty scene.  The movie was finally in the can (or so I thought.)

I had edited all the previous scenes and sequences as I went along but the real bulk of the editing started after the Big Shoot.  The schedule was as follows:  full time work during the day Mondays through Fridays 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, get home and sleep from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.  Dinner 8:00 to 8:30.  Editing 8:30 PM to approximately 2:00 AM.  Sleep from 2:00 AM to 7:30 AM.  Back at work and repeat.  On Saturdays and Sundays I would edit twelve to sixteen hours per day. This schedule was kept up for thirteen months at ninety hours of work per week.

By the winter of the fifth year I realized that more interesting shots were needed for the tunnel chase and the flashback sequence of the Sahara Desert.

I spent my Christmas vacation filming one hundred and fifty feet underground in a Bronx Water Valve Chamber of the Department of Environmental Protection Agency; in winding stairwells inside Brooklyn’s Arch at Grand Army Plaza; in an abandoned 19th century steam engine tunnel in South Brooklyn and recreating the Sahara Desert in my bathroom with two hundred pounds of sand that I had bought and filled my bathtub with, sending particles of sand flying all over the apartment. 

The shots of the jewels falling in the sand and the mercenary’s arm stealing them were filmed in my bathtub of my New York City apartment.  More shots of stills and slides for the flashback sequences were also filmed during that one week break.

I hired the services of an optical effect artist who worked from his home and did all the 16mm blow-ups of the Super 8 films of the Mont Saint-Michel, Sahara and France scenes.  I also gave him my grandfather’s original 16mm films of Cuba, which he had shot in the 1950s, to have him make a negative and positive of those old films.

Editing continued at a frenetic pace for several more months.  One last shoot was done in the spring: the title shot of the Golden Ram with the gold dust falling over it.

In the spring of the sixth year I hired the main musician/composer who started working on the score using a cheap video copy of a first cut of the film.

Credit cards were pretty much full at this point.  A rough cut was screened for family, friends and musicians.  Positive reaction from all encouraged me to continue.

During my summer vacation I locked picture and sound and an entire week was spent recording the music for the film during 6 PM to Midnight recording sessions after the musicians came out of their day jobs.

Post-production continued in the fall which also – unfortunately – found me back at my hated full time day job.  After five years and seven months, I now had an almost finished film and was tens of thousands of dollars in debt on fourteen credit cards. But, a small miracle happened: I had sent a video rough cut of my film to some festivals and one in Italy accepted it!

On my return to New York, I lost my job. Financially, physically and emotionally exhausted, I now had to shelve the project.

Obsessed with my film all these years, I had forsaken everything else. I had gained thirty pounds, had high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels, was depressed, older and more than broke. With unemployment checks running out and still no job prospects, I no longer had any choice. I borrowed money from my mother to pay for the attorney’s fee (because he said not to use my credit cards anymore...) and I threw myself at the mercy of the US Bankruptcy Court Southern District of New York.

The film lingered in boxes in my closet for some time as I struggled to get back on my feet, radically changed my diet, exercised, lost those thirty pounds, got off the medication for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, got off the anti-depressants, found another full time job and paid off whatever debts I had on the only two credit cards I had left.

Then, out of the blue, a friend of a friend who happened to be a video editor offered his services to finish the film on his Mac. The film was taken out of the boxes, digitized, transferred to hard drive and finally finished and authored on DVD. The film was screened at the Anthology Film Archives and at small festival upstate New York and received a Diamond Award from the California Film Awards in San Diego. A fairly happy ending after all…

With the help of family, relatives and friends, a dedicated cast and crew, great musicians, the right antidepressants, a full time job totally unrelated to film (but with a regular paycheck every week), fourteen credit cards, tons of coffee and caffeine pills, a lenient bankruptcy judge and several years of my life, The Golden Ram became the answer that my deceased grandfather had told me it would be.

Like most of everything else in life, it all started with a dream.  And the next time I interpret a dream to be a sign, I will certainly not follow its advice…

The Golden Ram cast by order of appearance:

Laurent Laperdris        Moktar
Jean Laperdris             Cal Calenario
Alain G. Cloarec           J. Flannery
Chris Arocho                Danton Panama
Louisa Cheref               Aurora d'Avila
Mike Russell                 Billy
Lorraine Cadena          Mamaluka
Midori Nakamura       1st Martial Arts Woman
Madoka Yamaki          2nd Martial Arts Woman
Miou                             Chewing Gum Woman
Philip O. Stearns         The Englishman
Cynthia Ming               Martial Arts Masseuse
Simon Brooke              Simon Garcia
Gerard Garcia             Gaston Garcia

Crew:
Nils Kenaston               Director of photography
Susan Zwilling              Additional cinematography
Lou Cubillos                 Additional cinematography
Dan Hersey                   Assistant camera
Phillip Yu                      Gaffer
Joe McGinty                 Original music
Keith Sanborn              Film editing
Christophe Durand      Digital editing & visual effects
Claudine Laperdris      Art direction
Keith Sanborn              Sound & mixing
John McGeehan           Sound & mixing
Mark Tocher                 Production manager
Sophie Elmosnino        Still photographer
Ana Oliver                    Script supervisor
Special Thanks to Patrick Pleven
Written, Produced, Directed and Financed by Alain G. Cloarec

The Golden Ram trailer and full movie on YouTube.

(The Golden Ram in its entirety is usually shown in the fifth class of my Directing Workshop course where it is analyzed in detail to show students all the mistakes I made -- so that they can avoid doing the same for their first feature...)