4 accomplished filmmakers talk about their inspirations and the importance of mentorship

How does one discover one’s passion in life and achieve the highest level in one’s field to make a mark in the world? By overcoming challenges, exploring uncharted territory and trusting in your unlimited potential.

Easier said than done, but that’s what filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and Alejandro G. Iñárritu believe in. Collectively, the four directors have won 57 Academy Awards, and created unforgettable movies such as Zero Dark Thirty, The Departed, Avatar and The Revenant.

These four Rolex Testimonees in cinema personify excellence in their craft, and are committed to passing on their expertise to the next generation of filmmakers.

The accomplished multi-hyphenates acknowledge that they were guided and inspired by filmmakers, teachers and others to break boundaries and strive for artistic greatness.

Scorsese credits his university lecturer in New York, Haig Manoogian, with setting him on the path to greatness: “He set a fire in our hearts… If you were crazy enough to think that you have got to make a movie, he was the one who inspired you.”

Here, the four share their inspirations, motivations, and how being a mentor is often a two-way process.

1.Kathryn Bigelow

Bigelow is the first and only woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director, for the 2008 political action thriller The Hurt Locker, which also won Best Picture. The American director has a natural flair for a strong visual narrative, and gravitates towards subjects with the ability to provoke change.

According to Bigelow, she would meet her mentor Lawrence Weiner a few times a week for over a decade, and he would always pose wonderful existential questions. “We would have these great, rigorous conversations that were in equal parts challenging, exciting and frustrating,” she says.

How does she perpetually get new ideas and inspiration? “Our minds are very elastic. We’re not like computers; we can’t hit delete. You have all of that information, all of those explorations, those discoveries, those influences, those inspirations. They live on in you,” she shares.

2. Martin Scorsese

Director, producer and screenwriter Martin Scorsese, whose career spans more than half a century, now enjoys an incredible sense of satisfaction from being a mentor.

“I always get excited by all the young people coming up to me and suggesting they want to make a certain kind of film, and I guide them as best as I can. When I see whatever they do, it means something to me [knowing] I had a little bit to do with that. It keeps me alive creatively,” he says. As part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2008, Scorsese mentored up-and-coming Argentinian filmmaker Celina Murga.

For Scorsese, who’s known for directing hits like The Color of Money, Goodfellas, Casino, and The Aviator, details add a richness in telling a story on screen – whether it’s a prop, or a sequence.

And for many of his most iconic films, the American filmmaker chose to feature Rolex watches, with a preference for the Oyster Perpetual Day-Date.

3. James Cameron

Making a character don a Rolex watch is something award-winning Canadian filmmaker James Cameron has done as well. Cameron has worn a Rolex for several decades, and the brand’s watches appear organically in his films, including the 1997 blockbuster Titanic – he gave the late actor Bill Paxton a Rolex Submariner to wear during filming.

“A Rolex is not only a beautiful watch and a masterpiece of engineering, it’s also very tough. It’s a watch that you can take into any environment and that can stand up to the pressure. So, what you’re saying subliminally to the audience is: That character can take the pressure, too; he or she has what it takes,” says Cameron.

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An acclaimed director, writer, producer and explorer, Cameron is best known for films such as The Abyss (which broke new ground in underwater cinematography and lighting), Aliens and Avatar, which have transported audiences to another realm with their advanced visual effects. Even acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick would agree.

When Cameron made a pilgrimage to Kubrick’s house in England to share how important his work was to him, he says: “He (Kubrick) didn’t want to talk about his old stuff. He was making a new movie called A.I. and wanted to pick my brain about how we did the visual effects in True Lies because he knew that there was this new thing with digital composites.”

He’s proof that mentoring is a two-way process. “I literally spent the day mentoring Stanley Kubrick. It was the most surreal experience. Stanley was like a sponge. Here is a guy who was almost 80 and still open and childlike, and all about the craft, all about learning how to do it and do it better,” shares Cameron.

4. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

The importance of embarking on a dialogue with others and sharing personal experiences is something that Alejandro G. Iñárritu firmly believes in. Says the Mexican filmmaker: “A teacher gives you knowledge, but wisdom is something else. (A mentor is someone) who helps you see something within yourself, something that you had not seen, and who gives you the confidence to carry it out, even if you James Cameron Alejandro G. Iñárritu think you don’t know it.”

The winner of two consecutive Oscars for Best Director (Birdman in 2015 and The Revenant in 2016), Iñárritu is known for his exploration of the human condition and his visual style, which have established him as a force to be reckoned with.

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“New generations think that because knowledge is available on the Internet, and is there waiting for them at any time, that it is inside of them. But that knowledge doesn’t do anything if there isn’t a complete immersion inside the experience of the person,” he says.

This philosophy was evident when Iñárritu mentored young Israeli filmmaker Tom Shoval in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2014-2015. Shoval, an Israeli film director, 18 years Iñárritu’s junior, shadowed his mentor from the New York post-production of Birdman through the arduous winter while shooting The Revenant.

Shoval says: “Alejandro offered me the opportunity to follow the shoot from his point of view. Such generosity allowed me to witness all stages of preparation, and watch him make decisions in real time, working the set and the actors. There is no better film school than this.”

This article was first published in Her World Online.