Conversations with Gabriel Gutierrez

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabriel Gutierrez.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’d say everything started for me when I was five years old or younger. I played with my action figures at my dad’s concerts and made stories with them that also fit the score. I was a very rambunctious child growing up and I never had the patience to learn a musical instrument. This was heartbreaking for my parents since my dad is an orchestra conductor, my mother a guitar player, and my older brother very quickly took to the piano. This secretly was a blessing for me though, because my parents, in their efforts to get me into music, enrolled me in the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts (FWAFA). There it was built into the curriculum to learn theater, dance, painting, and music. While there I dabbled in each of the arts and later in college realized that film gave me an opportunity to bring all of these art forms and skills together. Since then, that kid with action figures has been using his love for storytelling and the arts to not only tell his stories but to help others get their films out into the world as well. This has led me to start Fort Worth’s first-ever Latino Film Festival ‘Cine-Más, and later to get my MFA at the number one film school in the nation, the American Film Institute Conservatory.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
How is something rewarding if you don’t have to go through obstacles to get there? Of course, there were struggles along the way! Producing in itself is like struggling to guide a crew of 50+ through a land mine and doing it in a way that no one realizes that there was a threat of danger around every corner. But it is our love and devotion to these stories that make these films rewarding to us. I struggled to get here to this point because no one really tells you how to get here. My personal struggles came from my family working in an entirely different form of art, and because of that, they had no clue as to what I was doing or any advice to give. I had to figure this out on my own. Now, my struggles consist of navigating this landscape blindly and being able to march on after I accidentally run into a brick wall.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I don’t know if I have a signature per say, but one thing I have noticed as I make more films is that I love making films about families. As a Colombian-American, my family is central to me. A person’s family is at the core of their identity. How they were molded, how they communicate, how they love, and see others. I am drawn to these familial connections and the rich textures they have. They also are universal and very clearly can speak to the relationships we have with our own family members. Ideally, the films I try to make have a message in them that will encourage others to speak, cherish, or hold their loved ones a little closer in the end.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
The greatest thing I did to get to this point was to seek out my professor’s help. My professor Richard Allen at Texas Christian University was the greatest mentor I could have ever asked for. He never turned me away when I asked him for more homework or more scripts to analyze; instead, he kept fueling my passion to learn, and his teachings were fundamental in making me the filmmaker I am today.

I am a major film connoisseur . I try to see as much as I can in theaters when they come out because I believe it is important to see how a film is being received and later physically analyze the film to see what was successful or not and why. I know I’m super lame, but this helps me understand what stories people are excited about and want to see again and again.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @gabriel_a_gutierrez
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-guti%C3%A9rrez-76608a106/

Image Credits
My headshot and one other photo of me at monitor were taken by Ines Vasquez, but most of the images were taken by the great Jared Hawkley.