Dystopia Now: An Interview with Indie Filmmaker Javier Espinoza

Javier Espinoza is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker with a penchant for stories about the paradoxes of socialization in the digital age. His first feature length, Distortion: A Social Media Story, is an anthology of stories about young adults and social media. With the concept for a second film underway (based on his first written feature), he talks indie filmmaking, distribution, John Hughes, teaching and more.

NADIA CARMON: What makes Distortion: A Social Media Story so interesting is that it’s somewhat dystopian. Yet, it isn’t science fiction. It’s about the world we live in now.

ESPINOZA: The dystopian element is something that I wanted to incorporate because it was a way for me to be really clear about the tone and the overall message of the film, which is that our society’s obsession with social media has led us into this dark and lonely place. When I first wrote it my goal was to hold a mirror up to our audience and say, “this is us.”

NC: Although it has that dark undertone there seems to be an aura of hope, as well. This is state of our dependency on social media right in the present. But it doesn’t have to be our future.

I certainly think there is reason to be hopeful. My personal feelings on social media are somewhat conflicted: it’s this amazing tool for connecting us to the world and to others in it, and it could be used in countless ways to change things for the better. But we use it to take pictures of our dinner. I…