Spotlight: Jack Gewant (The Gilded Mirror)

September 17, 2026

Filmmaker Spotlight

The Gilded Mirror

Jack Gewant · USA · 12 min

What led you to creating The Gilded Mirror?

Starting from the beginning is often how I like to approach the things that interest me. With The Gilded Mirror, that meant shooting on film, directing classical performances, and exploring the older cinematic language of filmmaking. In making something about the past, I inevitably began thinking about the present, and about my own somewhat complicated relationship with contemporary cinema. The film grew out of a sort of tension: a desire to hold onto something while knowing that it has to change. In that sense, the story became as much about my relationship with movies as it was about the characters themselves.

The film grew out of a sort of tension: a desire to hold onto something while knowing that it has to change.

What were some inspirations going into the creative process?

Various films from the 1930s and ’40s were aesthetic influences. One in particular was Douglas Sirk’s film Lured. Boris Karloff’s character helped shape the Charles Randolph characted in The Gilded Mirror.

Another influence was a group of filmmakers in Los Angeles called Primordial Freak. My first real exposure to working on films shot on celluloid came from helping out on some of their productions. The films they’ve made, and how they’ve made them is very inspiring to me.

Tell us what you hope the audience gets from The Gilded Mirror and why is a story like this important to tell?

I hope the audience feels that The Gilded Mirror is not only a story taking place within cinema, but a story about cinema looking at itself. The characters are holding onto something that is already disappearing, perhaps without knowing exactly what it is they are trying to preserve. I think my own relationship with film is somewhere inside that. I don’t know that this makes the story important to tell, but it’s part of why the story is important to me.

How did you become a filmmaker?

Coming out of high school, I was interested in acting, but outside of that I was pretty clueless about the world of film. I went to college for about a year and a half before dropping out and started working as a PA in Los Angeles. After four years of mostly working on commercials, music videos, and reality shows, I became disillusioned with how much effort could go into making something I ultimately felt nothing toward. Just as I was ready to give up on film altogether, I found myself helping out on a Primordial Freak shoot, which reinvigorated my interest in the medium as an art form. Shortly after, I went back to school, where I had the opportunity to start making films of my own. It was through making those films and discovering what interested me that I began to think of myself as a filmmaker.

Film	The Gilded Mirror
Director	Jack Gewant
Section	Student Shorts
Shorts Program	Can You Hear The Music?
Runtime	12 min
Screening	Thu 24 Sep, 5:05 pm