Like many people from Ohio, Christian Hendricks eventually found himself in Brooklyn. In particular, he found himself in Bushwick, where he’s recently begun shooting short movies. Last year, the advertising executive in his early 30s shot his first ever of these,  a short called “Keyholder.” He describes it as a queer erotic thriller about moving into an apartment along the Ridgewood border. Fittingly, he shot it in his apartment along the Ridgewood border. It stars Pedro Lopo, a Brazilian model who Hendricks says he found on Instagram. The short screened last year at NewFest, a somewhat prominent film festival in the city that focuses on screening new movies by queer directors.  Watch it below.

Hendricks has since moved on to more ambitious things. He’s already shot a new short, which he is calling “Gains.” This one is not out yet because Hendricks is hoping it will land at one of the more prestigious horror festivals later this year. Those are the kinds of movies he wants to make. Brian DePalma. Micheal Mann. At any rate, Hendricks is putting his chips on this one. While his first short cost “basically no money,” he says that the new one cost him significantly more to make (“It definitely put a dent in my savings”). By day, Hendricks has his job in advertising, and he appears to be popular there. Serena Jiwani, who works at the same firm as Hendricks, had emailed me recently to advise that Hendricks’ short films were especially interesting “in the wake of Anora’s smash success.” These pursuits have so far resulted in a complementary blog in the local Schneps-owned Brooklyn Paper that impressively calls Hendricks a maker of “intimate short films that are raw, stylish and a little dangerous, capturing a specific kind of queer, creative life in Bushwick.” 

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Karpan: What brought you to New York? 

Christian Hendricks: I graduated undergrad from Bowling Green [State University] and I kind of bounced around. I did a production job in Las Vegas for a couple months, I moved to Pittsburgh for a couple months and then in 2013, I moved to New York. And I didn’t really have a plan. Seemed like a crazy city. 

AK: Were you in Bushwick? 

CH: I live in Ridgewood now, but I moved to Bushwick [first]. I lived [by] the Wilson Avenue stop, back when literally nothing was out there, there were no coffee shops, there were no grocery stores, it was very different. 

AK: What was Bushwick like in 2013? 

CH: My first apartment faced that cemetery that the L train runs along. That was literally the view outside of my apartment. Just gravestones. Which made it feel like the end of the city in a weird way. And I remember a lot of the apartment buildings were empty on my block. There might have been a bodega, but otherwise, there was nothing, there were no restaurants, there were no coffee shops, there were no grocery stores. I think there’s a wine bar over there now, which is just so crazy to me because that is three degrees removed from the things that were options in that area back then. It was so empty twelve years ago. 

AK: You feel like its totally changed now?

CH: Totally changed. It feels like a different world. I went to that subway stop recently for the first time and the Wilson stop there, it’s uniquely laid out and I felt like I need to [eventually] shoot a film there.

AK: Tell me about your ad agency work.

CH: I’m a creative director at an ad agency. All the work we do is public interest work, so it’s, like, PSAs about remembering to vote or public health services here. It’s kind of that PSA-type stuff. I’ve been there for seven years but my film work is just something that I keep a little separate from that.  

AK: What made you want to move to New York? 

CH: I knew I wanted to move to New York since I was 15. I guess I had seen a couple movies about artists or gay people living in New York and felt: that’s where I have to live. The bohemian, gay lifestyle of New York attracted me.

AK: Did you feel like you found that?

CH: Yeah, actually. I live with my composer [Carlos Aguilar] which is kind of funny and bohemian. He scored both of my short films and we’ve lived together for four years now. I didn’t really know him when I moved in, he was a friend of a friend but we became collaborators very quickly. So, in a sense I really do have that artist community living the dream in New York City.  You can go out to a bar around here and meet an artist, a musician, a performer, a dancer, all in the same night and it’s like everyone is so eager to collaborate and work together and it makes these mico-indie films that I make much easier to make and I have such an enthusiastic team of actors and crew. That’s exactly why I moved here.   

AK: What made you move to Ridgewood? 

CH: I guess just rent. We found this place in Ridgewood that was cheaper but also nicer and we’re right along Wyckoff. We call it ‘RidgeWick.’ I have a lot of friends who live here now who did not live here just a few years ago, so I feel the same thing. I think Bushwick is more expensive and maybe it’s more desirable for some people because there’s more parties and bars over there? It’s hard to say.

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Top image taken from “Keyholder.”