Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the sonic wizard behind art-rock band The Mars Volta, is a guitar god to be feared. But indie film should watch its back, too. On Thursday, his directorial debut, The Sentimental Engine Slayer, premieres at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

"I never intended to do anything with this film besides go through the process, learn from it and then move on to the next," Rodriguez-Lopez, 34, told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "Now that I'm dealing with the reality that it is getting invited to these festivals, and that the film is no longer 'mine,' I am nervous as all hell!"

(Read Wired.com's full Q&A, "Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's Sentimental Education," which includes the director's list of must-see movies.)

Like much of Rodriguez-Lopez's musical work, The Sentimental Engine Slayer is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story steeped in the drugs and drama of a youth spent swimming upstream in desolate El Paso, Texas. Rodriguez-Lopez didn't just direct the movie – he stars in it, playing the lead role of Barlam, a young man running with hustlers, whores and drug addicts.

Still, the movie is a much quieter affair than The Mars Volta's epic, electrifying musical mash of punk, funk and rock. (Check out the clip above.)

Working both sides of the camera's lens made Rodriguez-Lopez's Sentimental education easier, not harder.

"What at first seemed like a distraction from my duties as a filmmaker quickly became my ally in realizing the film," said Rodriguez-Lopez, whose previous films, 2001's A Manual Dexterity and 2003's Letters From Dystopia, have yet to be released. "This sink-or-swim situation forced me to overcome my fears and actually enjoy living the film in such a profound way with the other actors."

Living in profundity has become harder since Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the guitarist's childhood friend and artistic compatriot, first tore eardrums and brains apart with The Mars Volta's deafening 2001 concept album, De-Loused in the Comatorium. That release was a shattering follow-up to Relationship of Command, the 2000 classic from Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala's former group, At the Drive-In. Together, the records' cerebral noise heralded the return of epic concept rock for the digital age.

But during our still-young century, technology has increasingly freed and enslaved us, argues Rodriguez-Lopez. The dizzying result has been a new strain of apathy that threatens to sever our social bonds.

"I'm repulsed and attracted to technology's double-edged sword," Rodriguez-Lopez said. "What in one way is bringing us all together like never before is also separating us in so many different ways.

"We are losing myth," he added, "which, as Carl Jung, Octavio Paz and so many others say, is the very thread of what holds a society, and all its wonders, together. And we're trading it in for an exclusively scientific, corporate and globalized culture of convenience. As Jello Biafra predicted, 'Give me convenience or give me death!' is our new American slogan."

That convenient laziness extends to Rodriguez-Lopez's chief instrument, the guitar. Whether it has shown up in The Mars Volta or Rodriguez-Lopez's solo work, side projects and cinematic efforts, his playing has placed him among rock royalty like Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Page.

Sadly, Rodriguez-Lopez isn't sure the guitar will survive our densely interconnected but socially estranged digital age.

"As one of my little brother's friends once asked me, 'Why play guitar when Guitar Hero is easier and so much fun?'" Rodriguez-Lopez said. "How many times have we seen people at a table together, but each alone on their iPhones or BlackBerries? I guess, in the end, we are together in our solitude."

Images courtesy Michael Rizzi

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