Congratulations Spinoza Hotel film Winner for best Avant Garde at iChill Manila Int Film Fest!
There are eternal spirits that cannot be contained by the boundaries and limitations of everyday life. Those spirits dwell in Spinoza Hotel.
Director Biography – Robert David Duncan
My core training in acting is from the Stella Adler Studio in New York. I love acting and filmmaking and Vancouver where I now live is a beautiful place to make films. I am interested in the dramas, delights, passions and heartbreaks that take place in everyday interactions (or lack thereof) between ordinary people. Most of my films have dealt with human-scale issues such as tough choices, love, dreams, hope and finding meaning and fun in life. I love an underdog story! My motto is don’t let anything get in the way of telling a story that might uplift someone – film it with your smartphone if that’s what you have, but get it done and share it with the world.
Director Statement
I’ve always been drawn to great spirits, the geniuses and mad people, thinkers and poets, heretics and rock stars, some living, many dead. I had an idea that perhaps mad genius is a form of substance, like an unseen blob of mercury, that floats around in space-time, touching down onto seemingly random people throughout history. What if all the touched ones continue to exist together in a separate plane, a place they colloquially refer to as Spinoza Hotel, a place where they rock and talk all night, sharing huge ideas and the pleasures of understanding one another? What if our so-called street crazies are simply denizens of Spinoza Hotel, passing through our material world on their way back home? Join our narrator on a tour through his world and hear first-hand about his magic realm. This is a theme I intend to keep exploring, since I have a nice inventory of footage and several more ideas. So there may be more Spinoza Hotel to come in the future. After all, hotels have many rooms and many residents!