How apt, that while I am preparing for a lengthy trip back to the Philippines, Amir calls me with news that he produced an abridged version of the film we made four years ago, “my break ups into a million pieces.†(He directed/edited/produced, I wrote/produced/was in it.)
Parts of it — stuff I said and thought, my clothes, my hair, who I was with, what I felt about race relations — make me cringe now. I feel so far removed from it, and yet at the same time it kind of feels like I’m watching my high school diary. I always did maintain that moving to the U.S. induced a second (cultural?) adolescence for me.
Other parts — the music, shots of the Bassland studio, the memory of shooting it with a group of people who’ve since then gone crazy, killed themselves, stopped talking to each other or fought drug addictions — make me nostalgic. And proud, at the same time. Like, I lived through this.
Like a high school diary, the short is a flashback of what my life in Orange County was like when my life was 180 degrees different from my life today. I had a band, I lived with a group of musicians, I lived in California, I lived in a community where the minority was the majority, surrounded by art and music. I had never owned a coat, barely drank beer, and had no idea what it was like to work in a newspaper. And now that my life is changing again, maybe I should say I’m 270 degrees different — I’m already on my way back to a full circle.
Anyway, the abridged version is every bit as good as the original. Please watch it, then vote for it.
Posted on October 18, 2008 by lillitot
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