Ivan Zivkovic aspires to be the next John Ford. At the moment, however, he pays the bills by editing videos and shooting second unit on low-budget features. Still, the 33-year-old director has managed one sought-after badge of arrival in Hollywood: He has been dubbed an "alien of extraordinary ability" by the INS.
Standing near the bar at West Hollywood's dark, trendy Formosa Cafe, bourbon in hand, Zivkovic twists a farm metaphor to explain the obviousness of his decision to come to Hollywood from Serbia five years ago. "What do you do if you want to grow oranges and you live in Siberia?" he asks, voice booming above the din of music and conversation. "You move to Florida. That is what I decided to do."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday August 01, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 37 words Type of Material: Correction
Film Expats -- Lupe Rilova and Susanna Bieger are co-founders of the Hollywood group Film Expats. Only Bieger was identified as such in the caption for a photo of the women in the July 27 Sunday Calendar.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday August 03, 2003 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part E Page 2 Calendar Desk 0 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Lupe Rilova and Susanna Bieger are co-founders of the Hollywood group Film Expats. Only Bieger was identified as such in the caption for a photo of the women in the July 27 Sunday Calendar.
Behind Zivkovic, a pack of martini drinkers listens closely as an immigration lawyer soberly explains aspects of the law. A cacophony of languages -- Spanish, Mandarin, French, some heavily accented English -- ricochets around the room.
Clearly, this is no run-of-the-mill happy hour, and Zivkovic is not the only "alien of extraordinary ability" in town.
Hundreds like him have turned out for this monthly gathering of the group calling itself the Film Expats. They're here to commiserate, network and celebrate their arrival in Hollywood, where they've come to ply trades ranging from directing to deal-making.
Even in an industry town where cliques form a protective armor against the cruelties of the business, Zivkovic and his pals stand apart. They're Hollywood's newest immigrants -- a new breed of creative talent that's arrived on the scene just as the industry is expanding its international ambitions like never before.
"Hollywood is more open than ever to reaching out," says John Lesher, an agent at the talent agency Endeavor, who represents directors like Brazilians Fernando Meirelles ("City of God"), Walter Salles ("Central Station") and Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Amores Perros"). "The excitement to sign people has made things much more competitive. We will take the best from wherever they are from."
Of course, Hollywood, built by immigrants, always has taken the best from the world: Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Evelyn Waugh, Ernst Lubitsch, to name just a few who made their way here in the 1930s and 1940s.
But this latest wave of expats is not a Eurocentric lot. They come from Asia, Latin America, Australia, as well as from Europe, reflecting contemporary immigration patterns and representing some of the globe's hottest movie-making regions.
Unlike previous generations, this group for the most part has not come to Hollywood to escape poverty or wars or persecution. They tend to be well-educated, show-business-savvy young men and women with a hunger to learn from the world's leading exporter of entertainment.
And they have landed on California's shore at the right time. Today, nearly 60% of Hollywood's box office receipts come from the international market.
Increasingly, Hollywood is feeding its gigantic production needs by searching for content, funding and talent from abroad. All of Hollywood's major talent agencies have people in charge of finding the latest trends, films, books and people from around the world -- anybody and anything that might translate into English and big dollars.
"It's an asset to speak more than one language and to know the film industry in other countries," says German emigre Susanna Bieger, a co-founder of the Film Expats group, who works as a talent/material scout for a literary agency in town. "This is not an American industry, it's a multicultural industry."
With 526 members from 50 countries, the Film Expats group is perhaps the largest group of its kind in L.A. Another is the whimsically named Frijolywood, made up of more than 100 Mexican film industry transplants (and another hundred or so non-Mexicans who are part of "Friends of Frijolywood"). Other loose networks of immigrants, including Australians and mainland Chinese, also gather regularly around town.
Most are not the famous foreigners -- people like Ang Lee, Alfonso Cuaron, John Woo, Gael Garcia Bernal or Penelope Cruz -- currently in vogue in Hollywood. But they do form part of the industry's core, working as producers, executives, publicists, directors, actors, screenwriters and cinematographers.
It is difficult to gauge exact numbers. None of the Hollywood trade unions or talent agencies keep track of the entertainment industry's immigrant work force.
"The truth is that the INS doesn't even know," said Chris Wright, an immigration lawyer who founded the Wright Law Firm in Woodland Hills.
But the consensus is that a strong foreign presence is a highly visible part of today's Hollywood.
"Go to any cafe frequented by industry types and you are bound to hear as many accents in English from Europe, Asia or Latin America as you are going to hear from other parts of the U.S.," said Wright, who himself is South African.
GLOBAL CONNECTION
