The landscape inhabited and brought to life by Puerto Rican born, Bronx bred filmmaker Pepper Negron evokes a dark, gothic wonderland where beauty, death, madness and passion flow together as fluidly as the blood trailing down a beautiful woman's throat. A self taught screenwriter and director, Negron comes across at first glance as a man driven solely by his haunting visions of an afterlife draped in black lace, red roses and morbid beauty. In reality this skilled auteur is a driven craftsman who deftly navigates through his chosen genre of the gothic with a single minded focus. Plunging into its depths, Negron aims to mine the macabre for the intrinsic beauty and captivation in which he himself has so often found solace. Calling the darkness his "heaven," the realization of his artistic vision enables him to make that same heavenly darkness feel lush and sensual for his audiences as well.
Negron's films combine his dual love of women and the macabre and it this same duality has given rise to "Dark Tales of Tortured Souls," a short film compilation of seven, stand-alone tales written and directed by him through his production company, Purple Velvet Productions. The seven short film series, in various stages of production, includes the titles "In stillness I Lie;” "Blood Drips;""Me I'm Not Dead;""Buried Dreams;" "Broken Whispers;""So Quiet;"and "Greshen." Notably, “Blood Drips,” was sparked into creation from its beginnings as a haunting poem penned by Christian Dior Collazo, brother of former recording artist Corina, now herself also a writer, actress and filmmaker. The poem inspired Negron who in turn created original music inspired by the poem. It was from these musical origins that the film began - and would later return.
Those first music pieces inspired by the poem begged for a story to be woven around its musical frame and it was through that need that the idea for a short film evolved. As is his artistic style, the visuals for the film came to him first and they centered on a woman sitting at a piano before committing suicide. Negron shared this evolving storyline with cinematographer Edwin Pagan, both of whom went back and forth with the idea of suicide until Pagan convinced him to keep her alive. The film then became the tale of a woman seated at a piano, caught in the depths of a dark revelry about committing suicide before emerging from that mental darkness. It was the film’s subsequent appearance at a film festival that led to “Blood Drips”’ road back to music. When the musical pieces within the film were noticed by two record label executives attending the festival, they asked Negron if he would be interested in creating music for a CD. “Gothic Melodies,” a CD of instrumental music co-created with fellow composer Luis Capri Duprey, was thus born. The creation of “Gothic Melodies” is rendered all the more incredible when you take into account that Negron is a self taught composer who first hears the music in his head before sharing it with Duprey who then captures those auditory visions on paper.
While the ability to create fully realized projects without formal training would seem nearly impossible to most, it is par for the course for Negron who has lived the life of the ultimate self taught multi-hyphenate. A self proclaimed visual artist, his artistic career also encompasses photography and illustration, both of which he credits with aiding him in the formulation of the visual imagery of his films. In addition to his artistic accomplishments, Negron is also a former extreme sports enthusiast (at one time almost choosing the career path of a ski instructor) who has also spent time underwater diving, skydiving, hot air ballooning and white water rafting. He also took private pilot lessons, an activity cut short when dyslexia made the necessary math work for piloting extremely difficult. Despite such adventures throughout the years, as well as a sojourn in the music business, filmmaking nonetheless always remained in the back of his mind.
It would be after an eight year stint in the music industry, managing recording artist -and future filmmaking collaborator - Corina, that the digital technology advancements in filmmaking would finally make it possible for Negron to transition to film and wholeheartedly pursue that interest. He then embarked on a self taught filmmaker’s course in which he read screenplay after screenplay in order to teach himself the intricacies of plot, character and dialogue development organically. During that time, Negron also watched films with the sound turned off in order to see without distraction the way that scenes moved and transitioned from one frame to the next. Those intense studies culminated in his directorial debut on the short film, “Master and Servant” which was accepted into a now defunct Bronx film festival. It was at that festival that Negron got to see firsthand an audience’s reaction to his work and, more importantly, was able to solidify his calling to be a filmmaker.
Chief among the films that followed “Master and Servant” was the short film he directed based on the Franc Reyes' screenplay, “Beauty.” The film was written by Reyes as part of a trio of short film screenplays he wrote for HBO’s project “Tales from the Brown City” wherein three up and coming Latino directors were able direct one of his screenplays. Negron was chosen to be one of those three directors and while “Beauty,” starring Lauren Martin, was well received by both Reyes and screening audiences, the project did not progress further due to the fact that the remaining two filmmakers failed to complete their respective films.
Currently, Negron is in post production on his most recent directorial project, “Skyy,” a short film starring Corina. Once completed, he will be hard at work finishing production on “Dark Tales of Tortured Souls” while also continuing to write new screenplays. Citing the seminal influences of such visionaries as David Lynch and Rod Serling, it is almost certain that Negron’s future works will continue to hold within them the fundamental elements of his fascination with both the darkest sides of human nature and those terrifying things that fall outside of nature.
Negron’s artistic world of dark and haunting tales and characters bring to life the gothic visions that he says constantly reside within him. He tells of hearing the characters speak to him long before they are ever seen on film or written down on paper. It is an inner world that most would find terrifying but one that Negron finds comforting and familiar. His background, one of difficult childhood experiences, gave rise to a man who can find beauty and seduction in the darkness, both the figural and the literal. His future, to be found one very far off day in a cemetery shrouded under steel gray skies, will see a crowd of elegant mourners huddled around a tombstone which proudly reads “Here Lies a Troubled Soul.” They will have come to pay tribute to a director whose long and rich career was peppered with a long list of great accomplishments.
"The Ministers," the latest film project by writer-director Franc Reyes, will make its national premiere in New York on October 16, 2009. The tale of two twin brothers who avenge the “murder by arson” of their parents in the South Bronx was penned by Reyes who draws on his experience as a South Bronx native and the recollections of the sweeping arson for insurance incidents that decimated so much of the Bronx in the 1970’s. It is a subject matter that highlights the effect that one pivotal moment can have on a lifetime and, more so, the effects that greed and evil can have in shaping the world view of its victims. It also highlights the very reasons that films from a Latino perspective are so vital – what is merely an unsavory footnote in the history of one New York borough is herein brought to life by a writer for whom those incidents were vivid and immediate. Thanks to Reyes, those incidents of profiteering at its most greedy and evil are dissected and re-imagined and, most importantly, a human face is given to the real life victims behind the dry statistics.
