A still from Mantis of Matthew Pettigrew. Photo courtesy of Justice Hardy and Brazen Pictures.
East Dallas neighbor and Pasos for Oak Cliff filmmaking teacher Matthew Pettigrew will be featured in this year’s Dallas International Film Festival (DIFF) through his role in Mantis. The film from director Justice Hardy, in association with 941 Productions and executive producer Lindsey Barnes, will make its world premiere at the festival on Saturday, April 25 at 7 p.m. at The Texas Theatre.
Pettigrew has been in the DFW Metroplex for about a decade and acting just as long, living in “Dallas proper” for over four years. We spoke to Pettigrew this week to hear about his acting background, his love of filmmaking and what the accomplishment of having his work featured in DIFF means to him.
Did you study acting or was this something you picked up out of passion?
The ladder, something I picked up and just started out of a passion. I had no idea what I was doing at first, but just said ‘screw it’ and applied to as many castings as I could. I just kind of lucked out and stayed determined, and now I have a film premiering at DIFF.
What did you do for your day job before working in film as the filmmaking teacher with Pasos for Oak Cliff?
The whole point of getting into acting was because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just had any basic nine-to-five job. So many different ones, from working in a coffee shop to working in Bath and Body Works. At one point, I did construction for quite a few years and waited tables, bartended. All kinds of stuff.
Courtesy of Justice Hardy and Brazen Pictures.
Can you tell us a little bit about Mantis and how you got involved with that?
Mantis, I call it a psychological thriller with a heavy emphasis on technology. There’s, and this is a real fact, that there’s still electrical activity in someone’s brain for 36 hours after they die. And our writer and director, Justice Hardy, found that out and made a whole story based off of it. My character is one of the first people to start working with the new technology, which can use that energy in their brain and basically project their being, and you’re able to interrogate that. I think it was the five minutes that they can remember before their death, so that’s the start of the film. And then obviously it kind of goes haywire from there.
And Justice, he just happened to find my demo reel, and he somehow found me on Instagram and sent me a DM, which I almost didn’t even see because it was a request message. I just happened to see it, I had a week to prepare, and we then filmed the whole thing in a week.
What does it mean to you to have your work be a part of DIFF and have Mantis premiere at the festival?
It’s incredible, really. I mean, I do it all because this is what I love to do. There’s nothing else I want to do. Whether anybody sees anything or not, I’m going to keep doing it. But the fact that me and everybody else involved in the film can get eyes on it, and get credit for the hard work we put in, is awesome. And then, in the fact that it’s premiering at DIFF, which is an Oscar-qualifying film festival, it’s like, ‘Whoa, OK, yeah, we really did it.’ It proves that it’s not just all theory that you, that you made a good film. It’s evidence that, ‘OK, yeah, we’re actually good enough, and we put forth a good product.’
What has the reaction been like from the children and peers you work with at Pasos for Oak Cliff?
Everybody’s really happy for me. I have a good group of people around me, and they’re all really proud of me. The nonprofit mainly started from providing sneakers for underprivileged kids, and it expanded from there. And now we have education reform. We get kids ready for their TSI (Texas Success Initiative Assessment), and they usually like it. I think it’s a 90% pass rate for all of our students. They learn how to design sneakers, and then in my class, I teach them how to make films. We have that program in all of June, and I am excited to talk to my kids when I finally get there and be like, ‘Guess what? Guess what your favorite teacher did? He’s in the Dallas International Film Festival.’ It’ll be really cool when all my kids get to watch it, because I love my kids so much. I’m always thinking they’re cool and I’m their teacher. They probably think I’m pretty lame. It’ll be nice to have the opportunity for them to see how cool I actually am.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
