The one face that has been prevalent all over Fantastic Fest for the past week, even more so than Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, has been Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo. His movie Timecrimes premiered to U.S. audiences here last year, and was snapped up by Magnolia; there’s now an Americanized version in the works. He’s been at pretty much every single screening, every event, and in every condition: tired, wired, drunk, sober, sleepy, awake.

He doesn’t have a feature film at the festival this year, but he did come with about 90 minutes worth of his short films, and those played as a single screening full of Nacho’s wacky blend of British and Spanish humor. Check out the full interview with him below, where you can also watch several of his shorts.

So, last time you were here in Austin, you were here with Timecrimes, and that film really had a big success story at Sundance and everything. Now you are here with your shorts.

Yeah.

Is that weird?

It’s pretty weird. I’m used to making the opposite way. So this is like, this is a producing job, but this is like going back in time because I thought, some of these works are, I made them after Timecrimes.

The core of this program is things I made before I had the opportunity to make a feature film. So, some of this stuff is kind of fine tuned…to develop some of this stuff in order to be able to make feature films.

For example, I would not be able to make a feature if I had not done things like Choque, for example. It was a very complicated to film to make.

But, some of the other stuff is things I do to survive. Because, from movie to movie, it is very hard to make films, to direct them. So, films like the little short films I make really similar, are things I have do to feel alive. Because what I most hate about filmmaking is the time that it takes from one movie to the other. I look to be a worker and make a few movies a year like Takashi Miike, but in Europe it is pretty complicated.

So, you get too bored in the downtime between movie and movie? Do you just get so bored you want to make something, even if it’s a short film?

Yeah. Actually, I try to entertain myself with writing. But the energy it requires to direct is something you become addicted to sometimes. So, I didn’t think… I mentioned “Crimescene” in 2006. [It is now] three years from then. So it’s not… it is a big deal.

Did you ever think you would see these short films on a big screen? I mean, a lot of these like the ones that were shot with the cell phone and others?

Yeah. When you are making short films with a cell phone, you are thinking of a really midget audience, a YouTube audience, with very specific text. It is not something you make for a large audience. Your expectations are different, and you feel a bit unsafe when you are showing these, suddenly in a place like The Alamo. In a theater. Absolutely! With a sold out sign at the door.

So, I felt a bit unsafe. But my short films are pretty short, and it’s just for fun. I don’t know. They are not very pretentious. It is for laughs. So, it’s OK at the end of the day.

Now, when you finish these shorts in Spain, would you release them on the Internet, or where would you show them?

Really, the cinemas. With the short films, they jump into their festival sequence. So they go into festivals, even international festivals. But most of my jobs are direct to… not directly to TV, direct to YouTube.

You said, “I don’t know why we are showing these. Most of these are online already.”

Yeah, well what… For example, my TV work is… that program, “Muchachada Nui,” the program which made these short films, is simply a revolutionary program because they jump into the YouTube at the same time they are shown on TV.

Yeah. So it’s similar, but on television.

Yeah. It is a 20 minute program and it’s a weekly program. But, just the moment that it starts, it jumps on TV. Officially, it is on YouTube, and on the web pages also. It is also one of the most adapted… I think it is a very adaptive formula in that sense. So, when the program finishes on TV, we run to the YouTube to see the comments, to see the stats.

A lot so those shorter films like Gremlins 3, the Back to the Future thing, Codigo 7, that was… Those are like, not to be insulting, but technically, from film making, those are kind of handheld shaky cam, but the writing was extremely funny.

So, when you are working on something like that do you consider like, “OK, I have this funny idea. I know it’s not going to look like Steven Spielberg shot it, but I have this funny, great idea.”

Yeah.

Do you just round up your friends and make those, or how do those typically go?

I know in the case of Code 7, that is a sweet situation because we shoot this stuff without knowing what we are going to do with it. Alejandro Tejeria, the main actor, he didn’t know anything about science fiction when we were shooting. We decided that after we got all the material. So, it wasn’t like if… It was working the opposite way, first you shoot then you think what to do with what you are making.

Then with Gremlins 3… the fact is I really love Lo Fi. Lo Fi is something that in music is something very… When you talk in terms of Lo Fi music terms, we do not know what we are talking about. We agree about some style, a very steady style, so you can make an LP, a real record, without a cent. But in terms of you making something, it feels you are breaking some rule.

For example, I love would to work with the most spectacular formats in the close future. I would like to make a movie in IMAX 3D technology. But at the same time I love Lo Fi. I love the texture of the .mpg, the VHS, that old format in which, for example, the British television, when they mix in the video, old video, tube cameras with 60mm…Yeah, when they use both formats in the British television, those seem… those, that impossible combination of two formats, I love that. I love that. For me, it is punk. So, you said that the next time you come back, you’re going to be here with another feature?

I honestly… I want to really deserve to be here. I want to be able to say… I would love to say I will be able to come here with a feature film each time I come back here.

I think you have an easy sell here… They love you…

Yeah.

They would be happy to have you back with another film.

I feel at home here. I feel like I’m going back to my roots.

For many reasons. I love the way some modern directors manage to make so many films. But, with all of them, the films don’t all have to be on the same level. For example, in the past, you had to grow from film to film. You had to make more expensive films each time, you had to grow. If suddenly you had a low budget… before working with earlier budgets, then it signaled that you were failing.

But today modern directors like Steven Soderbergh are showing us that we have the tools to jump to very cheap budgets from really large budgets. And this doesn’t mean… These days, this is not only a one direction road. According to this, now, I’m trying to make a Hollywood film. For example, I’m trying to make an average budget film with big actors, big names, and all that stuff, but at the same time, we are preparing a movie with a budget to be shot in Spain with only two or three actors in a flat, in only one location.

This is something that has to do with what I told you previously about my fear of not working enough or of waiting too much. So I love to face myself and tempt myself. I was able to make really fast, cheap films at the same time as really big ones.

I don’t want to have those careers in which in one decade I make only one, two, or three films. I want to make a bunch of films.

Would you make an English language movie here in America?

Yeah. I feel a very strong connection with this American culture. The biggest episodes in my life, they all happened here in United States, the Oscar thing and the Allen thing. So I don’t feel afraid of coming here and trying to make this big deal.

And at the same time, I work with, for example, icons like UFOs, sci fi, or time travel. And I feel they are pretty close to this culture, to this pop culture. So, I don’t feel far from Europe. I would love to have the ability of some directors like Guillermo del Toro, for example, to play both cultures at the same time, to feel free to go back there and stay here. That is perfect for me.

What other films have you seen at the festival here that you’ve enjoyed?

Yesterday I saw JCVD. I think it was awesome. I think the tagline could be: “Now, in the past, Jean Claude Van Damme has broken so many things, now he breaks the fourth wall.”

Literally, he does.

Literally, Jean Claude Van Damme breaks the fourth wall. I think it was awesome.  I saw this Spanish… I was waiting to come here to see this Spanish thing, Dr. Infierno, this crazy Spanish film. And it just blew me away because I knew these guys, they spent eight years to make this film.

Eight years?

And it’s such a crazy film. It’s like they were so concerned about so many things and they didn’t care about so many other things. You can think these guys are really crazy because of this difference between, for example, they made this amazing CGI sequence with a big robot, with a giant robot. At the same time, so many characters suddenly disappear from the frame. So I love this craziness where you’re just free at this level.

Santos, this is another crazy film, because they spent, again, many time making a film that is so ambitious and so complex, and so it’s not an easy film. And it combines different kinds of humor, very childish, silly humor, and very clever at the same time. My favorite humor are both these films, the most silly and the most sophisticated

I had this opportunity to talk with the filmmakers of Zombie Girl and I told them what is very frustrating for them about filmmaking is that you see this film and it seems to be an easy film. It seems to be an easy documentary. It seems to be made in a very light way, but you actually know it’s one of the most complicated works this year in the festival. It’s so complicated to make a documentary like that.

This year, I have to say, if I was here with my movie this year, I don’t know. This year all the movies are awesome. In the last week there were also a lot of incredible films. This year the selection is awesome. It’s really awesome.

Yeah, they’ve put together a really good festival.

It seems to be like that. I think this year’s going to be very well remembered in the future.

I openly talk about this festival. When I talk about this festival, I talk openly about the festival that’s changing my life in many ways. One of them, one year later, I hit this festival, I came here, one year later, I can see the resonance of this prize is awesome. It has been following me for all this year. For such a young festival, this is something really great.

I don’t know much about your career in Spain but I know you act a lot in your own films. Do you act for other directors?

Yeah, maybe, I mean, little roles for other films, for commercials. At the time the Oscar thing came [Vigalondos' short 7:30 In The Morning was nominated for an Academy Award], I was appearing on TV eating hamburgers and making glasses commercials. It was funny. And I made theatre. I had appearances in films. So I’m not… it’s pretty hard to maintain an actor career when you’re so focused on jumping from place to place with your own films. Either you are filmmaking or you are editing or you’re writing. So for me, I spent all the 90s being an actor and living as an actor, but now it’s pretty much complicated.

Are you coming back next year, if they ask you to come without a film, like what if they ask you to have your own event here or something, would you come back?

Yeah, I’d try. I’d try.

You might be making a movie.

I don’t know. I don’t know, maybe. You don’t know what lies… where life is going to take you.

True.

I hope to be alive and to be…

Knock on wood.

I mean, if I’m not here I hope to lose this festival for a very good reason like making Iron Man Part 2 or something like that. I don’t know.