This year “Pour Amour, Pourquoi” (For Love, For What), a witty marital strife comedy, delivered just in time to meet the A3F deadline, won Best Film and took second place for both ensemble acting and story and a third place nod for cinematography.

“Wish You Could Be Here,” “First Date” and “Apt. 3157" and the still unfinished “Magenta” all star an actor, Tom Blackwood, who consistently delivers intriguing performances. “We’re really lucky to have an actor like that,” Biswas said about his long association with Blackwood. But with  “Pour Amour, Pourquoi,” Biswas introduced a new talent, the actress Tara Fischer, who is also in “Reason” and will undoubtedly appear in future Biswas films.

Biswas first saw Fischer at a seminar when he was getting his cast ready in preparation for the A3F competition. He was immediately struck by “her presence,” he said, “and I knew I wanted to work with her.”

Neither knew the other, and nothing happened that day. It took some persistent cajoling with Jae Staats, founder of A3F, and a lot of e‑mails before the actress Biswas was referring to as “Terra” and the actress “Tara” were united via an e‑mail from Fischer to Biswas.

“Jae said this is a perfect opportunity for you,” Fischer said Staats told her. “This is the director who won last time. You need to do this.” She did.

“He’s got an eye,” Fischer said. “It’s the way he sees a scene. And he’s easy to work with because he comes across clearly to his actors about what he wants.”

And what he wanted next was “Reason,” an atmospheric ghost tale that could be referred to as a thimbleful of M. Night Shyamalan. Dark, bluish and creepy, “Reason” doesn’t waste a single frame and manages in three minutes to create a puzzle it will take audiences far longer than that to figure out.

It also posed the biggest challenge yet for Biswas–and the shortest shooting schedule, this time only 12 hours.

On March 5, due to a complicated series of events and misunderstandings, Biswas was surprised to find that he did not have an entry in the Phoenix Film Festival for 2006. His entry had somehow slipped through the cracks. Because he really wanted to be a part of the festival this year and he knew that the winners of IFP/Phoenix “Dead of Winter Challenge” competition would be screened at the festival, he snapped into action to get a film ready for the March 10 deadline.

“I had to give it a shot,” said Biswas. “If we don’t push ourselves, who will?”

One problem was that there were only five days until the deadline and Biswas had no script, no crew, and only one actress, Fischer, and his cinematographer Robinson, ready to work. Another was that the rules of the competition required that the movie, in addition to being three minutes long in the mystery/thriller/suspense genre, contain a specific line of dialog (“I need a line here.”) and use a pizza cutter for a prop.

By March 6 he had a script written, but “a day before the shoot,” Biswas said, “we still didn’t have everyone cast.” Patti Tindall, who had appeared in Biswas’ “Love Letters,” finally agreed to play a role “as long as she would be free at 3 p.m. to pick her daughter up from school,” Biswas chuckled.

The role of the main character, however, was still not filled. Biswas had asked Arturo Martinez, the brother of Valec Martinez, Biswas’ production coordinator and sometimes director of photography, to help out on the crew. Arturo had already acted for Biswas in “Magenta” and after he read the script for “Reason,” he regaled Biswas with such an in‑depth analysis of the character that the role became his.

With the cast, crew, and script in place, filming began on March 7 at 6 p.m. at the Scottsdale home of the film’s executive producer, Ann Pattison‑Bingham, because it was too long a drive for everyone to go to Biswas’ house in Tramonto.

Under the circumstances, shooting went surprisingly well, aside from the scene which contained the required line of dialog and the pizza cutter that had to be rewritten and reshot for two hours. This caused Pattison‑Bingham’s wrist to get so sore from holding a frigid garden hose on a window for three hours to complete the first shot of the film that she demanded “Water Sprayer” credit.

“Once we started, we just kept going and finished it,” Biswas said. And by that time it was 6 a.m., only 12 hours later.

“That was a long night,” said Fischer, who turned in her second striking performance for Biswas in “Reason.”

“Earnest (Robinson) drove to work straight from the set,” Biswas said. After a quick stop at home for a shower, Biswas went to work his day job as a software engineer. He took the next day off to edit the film and on March 10 they were on I‑17 speeding toward the finish line.

One deadline Biswas did miss this year was the cut‑off for entries for the Sundance Film Festival, but he doesn’t plan on letting that one slip away next year. Sundance can be a very important stepping stone for short‑filmmakers on their way to making feature films, and that’s where Biswas and his D.I.B. Pictures Entertainment are heading.

The films of Bivas Biswas have won 10 awards in the past year and “Pour Amour, Pourquoi” and “Reason” are currently with the selection committee of the Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight for possible inclusion. He already has a slot in the 2007 Phoenix Film Festival. And he even has a feature project called “Game of Time” that he wants to direct.

“I’m ready to move on from shorts,” Biswas said.

Probably, all he needs to make that happen is a deadline, preferably a short one.      

Reach the reporter at cmoore@thedesertadvocate.com.