It recently occurred to David Poulshock that his first close encounter with an authentic filmmaker was meeting Glauber Rocha in Rio de Janeiro, 1968.
Memories are vague, truth elusive, but that meeting resulted in a private screening of the great director's masterpiece, Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol. Poulshock screened the film for his fellow college students at the US Consulate theater in Rio as part of his overseas studies thesis. But when he returned the film, he found himself venomously accused by Rocha of being a CIA operative – an accusation that no doubt had something to do with the venue.
Not that these events have informed every step of Poulshock's own filmmaking career – there have been many side roads along the way, including ten years in a musical group that would later be inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. But things do seem to have come full circle, and the Northwest writer/director's creative spirit is often inspired by the themes of mysticism and social justice pursued by Rocha and others in the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement.
What would all of this have to do with TV spots for Spirit Mountain Casino, a public television series on higher mathematics, music videos for preschoolers, a marketing video about a table saw that won't cut your fingers off, or Poulshock's award-winning screenplays like The Fix, Dog Dirty Mean, or The House of Louie? Nothing directly, really, except for the fact every project deserves the same passion and originality required to make something as good as God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun.