Sally Squires: Sharing a Film Legacy
Monday, February 5th, 2007
From the most isolated spot in the world, Writer/Director/Producer Sally Squires struggled to have her voice heard. “I was born and raised in Perth, West Australia which is the most isolated city in the most isolated state in the most isolated country in the world,” said Squires. “I moved to New York ten years ago to get my films out there.”
The past ten years have been testament that Squire’s move was probably the best thing that she could have done for her career. She has written hundreds of scripts including children’s stories, plays, feature films, short stories, poems, and song lyrics. Squires also admits to having made more films than she can count which include three feature-length documentaries and 20 short films, many of them for children. And she’s done all of this while holding down her day job.
“I am a completely self-taught filmmaker,” said Squires. “I come at it from the writing point of view, but I always see my stories as films in my head. I started out with a Super 8 camera getting my friends and family to appear as my actors, and I have always loved directing.”
“I love every part of the filmmaking process and I am a one-woman band. For instance, with my TV show (Metro Elvis) I am the cameral operator, director, editor, producer music supervisor etc.,” said Squires. “This makes life very simple because I can go and film a show, go home and edit it and deliver it to the TV station the next day. I don’t have to wait around for anyone else.”
In addition to producing the weekly TV show mentioned above that features New York area bands and performers, Squires has written and produced a children’s series Wizzo Bizzo Gizzmos which has been broadcast on cable in New York. Her current projects include three feature films. One is called Declaration of Peace which is set in Harlem and highlights what Squires calls “invisible genocide,” in which a whole generation of young Americans is being killed by Americans on American streets.
Even though she has made numerous films, Squires admits that her sets in no way mirror those of Hollywood, and she doesn’t have any intentions of changing that. “For feature films of course I use a crew, but I always intend to shoot features like you would shoot a documentary – with a skeleton crew,” said Squires. “I laugh when I walk past the Hollywood set ups on New York streets. They have shit loads of equipment that they are never going to use. I could shoot twenty films with the equipment they have lined up to shoot one film, and I bet I could do it in a tenth of the time.”
As passionate as Squires is about making films, it is no wonder that her movie-making talents have rubbed off on her children. Both are adults now and have already made films of their own.
