Jonas Govaerts (32) is a Antwerp television/music video/short film director/musician. He'll start filming his first feature film (Cub) this summer. It’s a horror movie about Sam, a twelve-year-old imaginative boy who goes to camp in the woods with his pack of cub scouts. Together with the other cubs and the leader of the pack Sam finds himself in a dark wood where a psychopathic poacher and his masked helper live. What the cubs don’t know is that the poacher has laid out ingenious, lethal traps all over the forest. We talked to Jonas about how he got started and what's going on with the project now...
I've loved watching movies for as long as I can remember, but it wasn't until I found Evil Dead 2 in the local video store that I figured, 'Hey, maybe actually making movies can be fun too!' There's something about the energy of that movie that's very inspiring.
Dream is the correct word - to me, cinema is at it's most magical when evoking a fantastical dreamworld. I'll take Terry Gilliam over a D'Ardennes movie any day. Even The Brothers Grimm. Horror was my first love, but I love all genres equally.
No, I'm not. No first time director ever is, I think. Every project, no matter how big or small, is preceded by a lot of fear, stress and anxiety. It's just the way I function.
It's about a troupe of cub scouts setting up camp in the wrong part of the woods, basically. I wrote it together with Roel Mondelaers, who'll also direct his first feature this summer, a romantic comedy. I've had the idea for cub since I was a cub scout myself...
Again, no. I feel like a hack who somehow got lucky. But they're not getting their money back!
It's worth a try. We're on a tight budget, and the script is pretty ambitious, so all help is welcome. I'm a fan of crowdfunding, I've donated to a few projects myself in the past: the director's cut of Clive Barker's Night Breed, for example.
There's always stuff going on... We're adapting a play into a TV series for the TV channel , and also creating a animation series. And lots of low-budget or no-budget music videos.
Favorite director (national)?
Harry Kümel. Everyone should see Malpertuis, Daughters Of Darkness or De Komst Van Joachim Stiller - crazy, colourful, outrageously ambitious movies.
Favorite director (international)?
Michele Soavi. An Italian horror director who made my favourite movie, Dellamorte Dellamore, the only real rom zom com.
A dream cast for Welp would be?
I've got pretty much everyone I wanted, so I'm happy.
If you could (re)direct any movie, which one?
There are a few books I'd love to adapt: Roofworld (Christopher Fowler), Created By (Richard Christian Matheson), The Kill Riff (David J. Schow)...
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