About Cassava Films

ABOUT CASSAVA FILMS

Hall of Mirrors Cassava Films is a West Hollywood-based independent film production company that was founded in early 1997 to produce a feature called Foreign Correspondents, which was completed in 1999. The second feature produced under the Cassava Films banner was the thriller Claustrophobia, filmed in 2002 and released in 2004 (under the title Serial Slayer in some countries). Cassava Films is a one-man operation. That man is me, Mark Tapio Kines. I wrote and directed both of the aforementioned films, as well as the award-winning 2006 short The Closest Thing to Time Travel and other work. Not only that, but I am the sole designer and programmer for this here site. I set up cassavafilms.com as an "umbrella site" for my various projects, including all the films I hope to make in the future.

Cassava The name Cassava ("kah-SAH-vah") comes from the cassava tree, the starchy root of which is not only a staple food for Africans and Southeast Asians, but is also the source of tapioca, the gelatinous seed made popular in American puddings and Taiwanese "boba" milkshakes. Tapioca, Tapio... Get it?

I don't have any real philosophy for what Cassava Films is about. Basically I just want to make good, entertaining films, with strong characters and interesting storylines, for as little money as possible.

ABOUT MARK TAPIO KINES

Mark Tapio Kines I won't give you a boring autobiography, but I will mention a few pertinent facts, as many articles across this site make reference to them. I grew up in Cupertino, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In 1989 I came down to Southern California to go to CalArts, where I got my BFA in film, with an emphasis on experimental animation. After graduating in 1992, I moved into the city of Los Angeles and made a living for myself as a graphic designer. For seven years I worked in the Internet industry (and didn't get canned once!) designing web sites. Nearly four of those years were at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, where I was the art director for the Star Trek site, among others.

In April 2002 I quit my day job to pursue filmmaking, screenwriting, traveling, and just living my own life. Thus far it's been a success, and I get enough freelance jobs as a writer, art director, designer or what have you to pay the bills. In 2005 I married my girlfriend Miki and we live happily together with our cat Cricket.

ABOUT THIS WEB SITE

The Updates section is an online report, which I try to update once every month or two (depending on how much there is to say), where I share news of the status of my various projects as well as tales of my adventures as a filmmaker. It is not a blog. It is focused primarily on my professional life, though it does contain some personal asides.

The Films section is all about the films themselves. As I already made a large, stand-alone web site for my first film Foreign Correspondents ("ForCor"), there's not much here about it. But you will find a substantial area dedicated to Claustrophobia on this site, as well as any other future projects, both real and hoped-for. Currently the next project in the works is a scary movie called Dial 9 to Get Out. Some of you may recall that for a couple of years I was trying to get a film called Sharky Baby off the ground. I'm still trying. The script is ready to go; it just needs money.

The List of 9 is something I've been writing twice a month since late 1997, where I provide trivia tidbits about my work and about movies in general, occasionally give pointers, and write stuff even more random than that. It was supposed to be a "Top 10" list, but as I was designing the original page for it on forcor.com, the photo I used at the top of the page - that of me with some cast and crew from Foreign Correspondents - only had nine people in it, so I figured I'd just list nine items to match the photo. Some of those lists are definitely relics: I wrote many while I was still making ForCor and also while I was still developing the currently-stagnant Sharky Baby. So they may not be too relevant at this point. Hopefully you'll still find them amusing or enlightening.

The Reviews section is a collection of my own reviews of other films. I felt it would be interesting to offer the public film criticism actually written by a filmmaker, instead of the usual unqualified bozo in your local paper. The only rule I adhere to is that I only write reviews for current releases that I actually see in a cinema. If I tried to review every movie I ever saw, I'd be at my computer forever. I'll remind you that the reviews are, like the individual Lists of 9, little time capsules. (You'll note this whenever I reference my former employer Paramount Pictures as my "current employer.") I never go back to "update" the reviews.

The Contact page will tell you how to reach me, if you so desire. If you want to email me, you'll have to go to that page and then type in the email address you see on the graphic. I'm not including any HTML mail links on this site, because these days too many spammers automatically scan web sites for such links and I'm tired of it.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy your stay here at cassavafilms.com, or wherever your final destination may be.

- Mark Tapio Kines