In our discussion on Cinema After Corona, we join actor and filmmaker Jonny Lewis who excelled in short films and off-off-Broadway plays. 

Lewis started acting at age 45 after being invited to a theater audition “just to watch.” After lead roles in 3 Off-Off-Broadway shows in 2002, and winning a Best Actor award for the first short film he ever acted in, he moved to Los Angeles, where he did 150 student and indie films in 8 years. While taking care of his elderly mother in Michigan from 2014 to late 2019, Jonny occasionally flew back to LA to shoot short films that earned him 17 awards on IMBd (plus another 8 awards from festivals not listed on IMDb). Those films have had over 130 festival appearances, with 29 festivals actually selecting two of his films the same year. In early 2020, a film festival in Minsk, Belarus devoted a special section to five of his films. Jonny is the Animation Curator for the New York City Independent Film Festival (2019 and 2020). In 2020 he shifted his energies to writing comedy features. He has also written a comedy short in Japanese, to be shot in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan, in early 2021, Jonny will costar, with a Japanese filmmaker directing.