Indian filmmaker Stanley Hector, a 2015 graduate of the SIGNIS Communication Lab (CommLab) in Cambodia, participates in the Busan Platform, perhaps the most important production program on the entire Asian continent. The program takes place during the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in South Korea.
Stanley is one of 150 Asian filmmakers selected by the BIFF organization to participate in the Busan Platform, a program that includes lectures and advice on filmmaking, production, and financing.
“It’s a big step in my career as a filmmaker,” confesses Stanley, who says that “SIGNIS gave me a professional and global outlook” that was fundamental in consolidating his vocation as a filmmaker.
For Stanley, it is essential that SIGNIS can continue to develop this type of laboratory “at least once every year in all regions of the world,” says the Indian filmmaker who also participated as a facilitator in the COMMLAB in Chennai, India.
Regarding his relationship with cinema, Stanley Héctor seeks a “happy medium” between cinematography that bets on the depth of the human and cinematography that can also reach broad public sectors to guarantee the financing of new projects.
In this regard, Stanley admires the work of Martin Scorsese, whom he could hear firsthand during a keynote lecture given by the acclaimed filmmaker during the SIGNIS World Congress in Quebec, Canada, in 2017.
Interviewed in the vicinity of the BIFF Asian Film Market, Stanley recounts what will become his first feature film, inspired by the traditions of his community, in which he addresses themes such as destiny, freedom, and superstitions while fondly remembering former SIGNIS Vice President Lawrence (Eljay) Sinniah and Larry Rich, who made possible that communication laboratory in which an even younger Stanley Hector discovered a world centered on light that ended up being his life’s vocation.