Meet the Director: Stephen Mack
Today we highlight Stephen Mack, writer and director of The Anniversary.
Stephen Mack studied music at the New School Jazz Program in Manhattan before plunging into the world of film. He wrote and directed his first short film Nathan in 2006, followed by the Super16 feature Last Winter for which he won Peer Silver awards for directing and original composition at the DC Peer Awards in 2009. He was also awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2006, which helped fund the production of Last Winter. He has worked on many narrative, documentary, and television projects in the DC/Baltimore area as an editor, assistant director, as well as in the camera, grip, and electric departments.
“I wrote the first draft of The Anniversary almost as an afterthought. But I sent it off to three competitions and it placed in two of them, so that’s when I went back to it and started to develop it into something I could direct. I decided that if I was going to turn this into a film, it had to be something that would stand out from the pack: something that was uncompromising in every aspect and really aroused the audience. My hope is that it shows people something about themselves that disturbs them, then makes them laugh about it. And if it offends a few people along the way, that’s just a bonus.”