Directors Notes reviewed my film Shave alongside several of my earlier documentary works, recognizing narrative threads that connect these stories about my family & I: “Christensen’s films could technically be described as documentaries, but he employs a contemplative, first person narrative style, both in his narration and the visuals, which transform them into sinless confessionals from a front row seat with an unimpeded mind’s eye view.”
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"Order for Pickup" by Jackie! Zhou
My collaborator and friend Jackie! Zhou has released their latest film Order for Pickup through Indeed’s Rising Voices program. An empathic and expressionistic look at labor, scarcity, and isolation in a future adjacent Los Angeles, Zhou’s tender work behind the camera speaks to their background as a sound designer, creating worlds from the smallest details. Now streaming on Rising Voices Films.
About Rising Voices: In collaboration with Lena Waithe, Hillman Grad Productions, Ventureland, and 271 Films, this program aims to discover, invest in and amplify stories created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) filmmakers and storytellers.
About the filmmaker: Jackie! Zhou is non-binary and ageless. They are a Los Angeles-based artist, director, and sound designer who is keen on blurring the lines between formats and disciplines. Embracing maximalism, their style leans towards heightening the absurd while staying grounded in real emotions. This work has led them to: documenting an all-girls’ competitive robotics team, performing John Cage’s Water Walk at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and teaching as an artist-in-residence at UC Davis. Recent work includes the interactive documentary FaceTime, produced by POV Spark and NFB, and “thumbnail”, a work-in-progress experimental play. Their sound work has received a Primetime Emmy nomination, a MPSE Golden Reel, and the 2021 Tribeca X Award. Most recently, they performed in Free Solo: The Musical in the role of Jimmy Chin. Above all, they believe good listeners make great storytellers.
Vimeo On Demand: "Ghost Tape #10"
I'm grateful for every teacher and student who invited Ghost Tape #10 into their classroom or onto their laptop these past several years. I learned so much about my methods and practices as a documentary filmmaker through the dialogues we shared. Now available exclusively through Vimeo On Demand, I hope that my film can help educate those following the footprints of war, and where those secret paths lead.
Special thanks to Ca Dao "Cookie" Duong, the Nguyễn Family and the guidance of my USC MVA mentors & professors Jenny Cool & Janet Hoskins.
Ghost Tape #10 from Sean David Christensen on Vimeo.
About the film: Created by the U.S. Army during the American War in Vietnam, "Ghost Tape #10" was one of many audio tapes engineered to psychologically terrify the North Vietnamese Army in its depiction of wandering souls lost in the Buddhist afterlife. By re-examining this weaponization of religious belief, reflections on this artifact of American propaganda lead to meditations on relationships between the living and the dead, asking what truths, if any, still echo within this recording.
Lauded as "...a haunting portrayal of U.S. militarism" by General Anthropology, this award-winning documentary by Sean David Christensen excavates these disturbing secrets of war through a dreamlike narrative that author David Biggs calls "Fascinating...considers elegiac currents through which people in Vietnam continue to reckon with war's ghosts."
"What I Had to Leave Behind" at 2022 HollyShorts Film Festival
The Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival hosted a screening of What I Had to Leave Behind at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, CA on August 18th, 2022. It was a fun night sharing the evening with my friends and collaborators from the film: cinematographer Wenting Deng Fisher and animator Cassie Shao. Our mighty sound mixer Jackie! Zhou had three films in the shorts block we played in, including our own!
"What I Had to Leave Behind," original motion picture score by Branden Brown
It was a joy working with multireedist and composer Branden Brown on his first film score for What I Had to Leave Behind. A graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music Jazz Studies program, I discovered his gift for composing at one of the school’s jazz concerts, all of which, had been converted to pre-recorded livestreams during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Coincidentally, I was able to virtually attend more concerts than I had been able to do so years before in person, and the experience forever opened my mind and ears to these remarkably talented musicians.
Branden assembled an exceptional ensemble to perform his original jazz score, which he conducted from behind his player’s podium as the saxophonist. Joining him in the BioSoul Music scoring stage were trumpeter Ethan Chilton, bass clarinetist Eric Croissant, drummer/percussionist Lauren Ellis and bassist Cyrus Elia. Adding later on to the score, remotely, was keyboardist Magdalena Daniec of Joy Guerilla. The session was engineered by Daniel Weidlein.
As we wait for our film festival premiere and an opportunity to share What I Had to Leave Behind in its entirety, please enjoy Branden’s musical score that evokes the film’s contemplative themes of remembrance and letting go of the past. (Music animation by Cassie Shao. Photography by Wenting Deng Fisher.)
Working in miniatures: Dystopian sci-fi semi-truck
I hadn’t fully comprehended the size of my latest miniature, a five-and-a-half-foot long “land train,” until I sat down behind it for a photoshoot at Dreaming Tree studio in Burbank, my friend Kate from The Daily Mini behind the camera. Transporting it to set on the morning of December 12th, each plastic squeak as it rattled in the back of my Nissan Versa hatchback stirred up memories of cradling school projects, dioramas, in back of my mother’s car, worried that they’d fall apart at the slightest bump in the road. But we made it, all 65 inches of this dystopian sci-fi semi truck painted in battleship grey for the upcoming sci-fi black comedy Animal, directed by Lauren Adams.
Set against the canvas of a collapsed, alternate history America, the film's characters pilot a massive self-driving, windowless ship for the monolithic company "PostHaste." We follow these two women as they cargo tons of freight across a desolate expanse of abandoned cities as they deliver supplies for an ongoing and ambiguous rebuild of the country. Or, so says the company. The ship was modeled from a floor plan of the life-size interior set built for the actors, which was then scaled down to 1:24 to maintain its proportions. I was inspired by the unsympathetic nature of PostHaste and its complete lack of regard for the human pilots' safety in piloting their ship. You may see there are no safety measures on the vehicle: No guard rails or warning labels that you might ordinarily see on massive industrial equipment to protect the manufacturer against litigation from personal injury. In this dystopian future, the ship represents (even from a color standpoint) this massive, grey unsympathetic force that plows through anything, even people, to make more money. The size and heft of this miniature is a pointed commentary on that theme in the script: Packages must be delivered, no matter what the human cost.
The cockpit of the miniature is a partly deconstructed model kit of two semi trucks designed by AMT Models. These were used to match the life-sized interior of the ship, shot on a soundstage months prior. The other materials I used were wet media board, basswood, wooden dowels and bits of recycled plastic to "bulk out" the form. I handcrafted the shape of the front windshield and side windows to match the life-sized film set, so the edit would be as seamless as possible between the miniature and the actors inside the ship. For the windshield, I used a piece of lighting gel (ND filter) to simulate a tinted window. I didn't want the audience to be able to look inside. There's something sinister about not being able to see what's going on behind the “steel curtain” of this imposing vessel. The completed ship is just over five feet long when fully connected, made up of a cockpit living quarters section and two shipping containers joined together by "mechanical joints" made of basswood. These joints mask the seams in between each car, and create an illusion of this ship being one continuous machine, a force of industrial brutality.
Behind the scenes: "What I Had to Leave Behind"
Here I am dusting the miniature set of What I Had to Leave Behind, my latest film. In my (comparatively massive) hand, I’m wielding the same 1/2 inch acrylic paintbrush I used to paint this dollhouse-scale apartment. I should’ve made a dust pan before I started sweeping, too! Photographed by my director of photography, Wenting Deng Fisher, we wrapped filming in April 2021 with these miniature unit shots to help tell the story of this hybrid live-action/animation diary film. Featuring animation by my friend Cassie Shao, an original jazz score by Branden Brown and sound design by Jackie! Zhou, I’m looking forward to completion this summer and building whatever comes next!
A conversation with “Lata” filmmakers Alisha Tejpal and Mireya Martinez
A meditation on class and space in South Mumbai, Lata frames the life of a young domestic worker (the film’s namesake) within contrasting privileged and prohibited interior worlds. Director Alisha Tejpal and producer Mireya Martinez, who both co-wrote the screenplay, shared with me their creative process shortly after the screening of their film at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
ARCHITECTURE, DISTANCE & PRIVACY
Tejpal: Before even knowing the story, the film was very much structured around the idea of wanting to capture modern day, post-colonial architecture and spaces in India that reflect the ways in which even urban architecture perpetuates this system. The home is divided in particular ways, there's particular corridors and doors that cut access. The quarters that the help live in are so segregated, both in sound and in location. So, this idea of wanting to have this architectural element play a role as a character in the film was very important to us. We started to script keeping in mind that the film would at first just be this look into small, segmented spaces of the home, and as the film proceeds, we open the world so you get a sense of the architecture of the entire space. The sound of the outdoors is what would guide us in understanding how far Lata is from something, how much she can hear or can't hear.
Martinez: I remember while we were writing the script, Alisha said something very funny to me...that she couldn't ever envision the film in a close-up. It's almost like her brain had a block where it just all took place in single wide takes that cut into each other.
Tejpal: Yeah, that's true. I do think the film benefited from my not-yet-advanced filmmaker brain in the sense that when it came to editing, I was still unable to fully comprehend shot sizes. So, my natural go-to response has always been wides. The framing of the film was very much an attempt at maintaining distance from the lead as a constant reminder to the audience that the filmmaker is of a different class and caste, right? That the filmmaker is an outsider, and I’m not in any way proposing to give a voice or be a voice for the various actors. They have their own voices and very much have the agency for it. That isn't my job or my place to do. In some ways that dictates the distance, as well as this repetitive reminder, even to the viewer, that we are looking into a life that also has its own privacy. We had a rule with our DP (Director of Photography, Ravi Kiran Ayyagari) that no matter what, the camera always stays at eye level. Even if it's not the best, most beautiful frame – we meet Lata at eye level, no matter what. As much as you are getting access to, I am getting access to as well. The access, in this case, is being controlled by Lata and protecting and preserving her own privacy as well.
PROTECTING THE VISION
Martinez: It's a very close creative collaboration. I was a co-writer and a producer and a creative producer. I think all of those roles may sound like a lot, but to me they make sense. The writing component was the one that stuck more to being a co-writer, whereas the other roles merged into one, becoming a facilitator for Alisha's vision – also a protector of the vision itself. Firstly, you're supposed to take care of getting what you actually need for the film. I think for awhile she (Alisha Tejpal) had a very strict, theoretical idea of what she wanted the film to be. But the whole time I was like, "Okay, I understand that it has to hit these aesthetic constraints that you want to reach. And you want it to do XYZ on a theoretical claim, but where’s the meat? So, a lot of our co-writing exercises were more about dragging out the meat and putting it on the page. The script. As a producer, it was just about—
Tejpal: As a protector.
Martinez: (Laughs) …as a protector.
Tejpal: I want to know this too.
Martinez: I think as a director, if you're doing too much, you’re bound to stray away from the thing you want to make. I remember that because I'm also a filmmaker and I definitely struggle, or have struggled in the past from trying to do too much, which I think is part of what makes me a reasonably good producer.
Tejpal: I like the term “protector,” and I think that's where the role of a creative producer comes in, depending on the relationship. It's not about how many shots you can get and how much of the film you can get. It's about figuring out what serves the film best.
Martinez: This is a silly example, but as a director—I was trying to shoot this short film. Alisha was on camera and it was my own project. I wrote the script about a little girl whose turtle dies. I was doing too many things at once, so I went and ran out to the rental house to get a little fake turtle. But between the stress of directing and the shoot and all of these things, I forgot a key component, which was that the turtle was supposed to be the size of the fish tank. And I ended up renting a tortoise.
Tejpal: A tortoise. (Makes shape with hands)
Martinez: And that's what I tried to not let happen to Alisha. It's about catching all the things that would distract her from what she's actually trying to make.
OCCUPYING THE SPACE
Martinez: We had a very leisurely schedule, which was a choice. The pace was very slow, it couldn’t have been made any faster. Sometimes we’d have an hour-long break in the middle of the day because if we have control of the set, why don’t we do what we would like in the real world? There were moments where the crew would look at us and just be like, "Why are we waiting for the sunlight? Just light it.” And we had to stick to the original vision and wait for the light outside to naturally change.
Tejpal: Just to add, I think the biggest thing we learnt from all of this was that you have to serve the project what it needs, right? I don't think it would’ve been possible to have made Lata without non-professional actors and on a tight schedule. If I want this woman's presence to fill the frame and I want whatever her body carries to find its own meaning within the space, then I need to give her time and time doesn't necessarily mean with the camera rolling. So, we shot over five days. We could’ve done it in three, but we gave it time. There was time for her to repeat the gestures, or the living room shot where she swept. She must've swept eight times before we even shot it.
Martinez: Or just be there.
Tejpal: Or just be there, and I think it had all of that. It's not something you can rehearse, right? It's muscle memory. And it's the way your body reacts to objects. And I think all of that infuses the frame. And for that, we had to make sure the base of the film permitted her to keep up and to sort of experience the space and give her the space to do that. But we also used it like a framing device, right? Because we don't really hear her name until the end of the film, so it became a play on who does the audience latch themselves onto in the first scene? When a film opens, there's a certain expectation of story and how we read story and where we latch ourselves onto what stories we think are worthy of our attention. And similarly, what characters usually tend to dominate stories. We were interested in also playing with that, the ways in which we attach ourselves to upper class and upper caste characters in the frame almost instantly, because the working class is always usually the background, unless sort of “made a protagonist” by a specific cinematic language, like a close-up.
Martinez: It’s something that I believe in, and I think Alisha does too. I think when these choices have a true history, or depth, or are thought through, usually people feel it even if they're not consciously aware of that depth.
Tejpal: It’s something we both agree on. For cinema to be accessible, it doesn't mean it has to be passive. It can still be cinema that demands participation and that if you leave the room with questions, then I think that's more interesting to me than giving you all of the answers. I think in some ways, both of us resist this idea of cinema being universal and this idea that it speaks in the exact same way to everybody. I think there's a beauty to not knowing everything and that it's okay for a foreign audience to watch something about a particular environment in India and not know. As long as it allows space for participation and space for questions, I think it's successful.
Lata will make its European premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, June 2nd through 6th.
"Moon Manor," a film by Machete Bang Bang & Erin Granat
I’m over the moon (pun intended) to hear my friends Machete Bang Bang and Erin Granat now have an international sales agent for their debut feature film through Rock Salt Releasing! Moon Manor is an important story about accepting death on your own terms, and I’m grateful that this new creative partnership will give folks around the world an opportunity to get to know Jimmy and experience all the hard work that went into making this film.
From Deadline: “The film stars Lou Taylor Pucci (American Horror Story), James “Jimmy” Carrozo, Gayle Rankin (GLOW), Ricki Lake (Hairspray), Debra Wilson (Star Wars), Richard Riehle (Casino), Reshma Gajjar (La La Land), and Heather Morris (Glee). The story follows a man with advancing Alzheimer’s who decides to take his own life, but to have one last day of fun while doing it. Machete Bang Bang and Erin Granat of KnifeRock directed. The film has a score by Coldplay producers Rik Simpson and Dan Green and features additional music by M83’s Joe Berry. Pic is produced by KnifeRock, Bay Dariz and John Humber.”
A conversation with Sundance 2021 filmmakers Julian Doan & Brianna Murphy, “Raspberry”
A young man (played by Raymond Lee) struggles to say goodbye to his father for the last time in Raspberry, from writer/director Julian Doan and producers Brianna Murphy and Turner Munch. As they prepare for their film’s world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, my conversation with Julian and Brianna revealed how their observations on relationships between the living and dead influenced the making of this short, and what it offers to audiences as a way to reflect on the grieving process.
Julian: It was a Monday at like, 3 PM. I was in the middle of working and I looked at my phone and had a missed call from a 310 number that was maybe ten to fifteen minutes ago. But there’s no voicemail or anything, so I thought maybe it was someone at work or someone asking about a job, so I called them back. A woman answered and she went, “Hello?” And I’m like, “Hi. I got a missed call from this number.” And she was like, “Who is this?” And in my head, I’m like, “You called me. You probably know who this is.” So I told her my name and she said, “Oh, it’s Heidi from Sundance.” Immediately I was really excited but also really on guard. For some reason, I don’t know, I was expecting they were calling us to tell us “It was great, but…”
Brianna: They don’t call you. (Laughs)
Julian: (Laughs) I know.
Brianna: They don’t call you for that.
Julian: So anyway, she was like, “We watched Raspberry, we thought it was great, and we’d like to invite it to Sundance 2021.” I tried very hard not to lose my cool. So I went, “Yeah. Oh, that’s great. That’s really awesome,” but inside I was freaking out. I kinda wish I’d let myself freak out a bit.
Brianna: Well, you told them maybe. (Laughs)
Julian: Yeah, so pretty much we didn’t know. We didn’t know what to do with this festival season with COVID and everything. Things were so uncertain. I sort of asked her whether or not the invitation still stands if we wait a year. And she said, “No you’d have to re-apply.” I don’t know what I was thinking, but I asked, “When do you need to know by?” She was like, “I mean, as soon as possible. Preferably by the end of the week.”
Brianna: (Laughs) Oh man.
Julian: “Okay. I’m like 90% sure it’s a yes,” I said. I think I needed to call someone. I needed to call you, at least. It didn’t feel real. I texted you, right?
Brianna: No, you called me, but I didn’t answer because I was in the middle of working. Then he texted me and said: “It’s not an emergency but call me when you get a chance.” I texted back: “Maybe six o’clock when I get off.” This was three hours away. (Laughs)
Brianna: So he called his friend Bernard, whom he shares good work news with.
Julian: Yeah, I just needed someone to freak out with. So, I’m telling him everything and he goes, “Have you told Brianna yet?” And I was like, “I tried calling her and she told me she’d call back tonight.” And he was like, “No, you need to tell her to call you back now.”
Brianna: (Laughs)
Julian: It was like I hadn’t thought of it. (Laughs) So then I hung up the phone and I texted her again, “But like seriously if you get like five minutes just give me a call.”
Brianna: So, I call him back and he says, “I just got some amazing news, do you wanna guess what it is?” I have no idea. “Really?” he says, “you have no idea, what that news could be?” He said, “We’re gonna be Sundance filmmakers.” In my head, I imagined this is what people who want to have children feel like when they find out they’re pregnant for the first time. It was pretty unreal.
Julian: I heard some sort of whimper on the other end of the phone. Are you crying, are you laughing? What’s going on?
Brianna: I was crying. Laugh-crying. I felt like I smiled the whole rest of the day. Maybe they couldn’t tell because I was wearing a mask.
Julian: I had been writing a lot of this stuff over the past two years, when my dad passed away, and honestly a lot of that is just literally what happened, so it didn’t take a lot of creative extrapolation to put it down into a scene. I guess what it was is when I’m going through all of that, it’s just a lot of observations, like watching my brother and how he’s grieving and watching my mom and thinking about how I’m grieving. So, the first step is you need to attach it to a character. There needs to be a character who’s experiencing these things. That’s probably the easiest way in for someone to watch it. It’s essentially combining all those emotions into one person.
Brianna: In discussing making it and discussing the script, it is a very personal experience for you, but at some point in their lives – everyone deals with somebody dying. I remember when my grandma died, she wanted to have her memorial service in her home. When they brought her casket in, it was very solemn and they put her in the parlor…and then when they opened the casket it was sorta like, “ta-da!” It felt like a magic trick, like a reveal, the way the guy did it. Like, “here she is!” It was so weird.
Brianna: I think there is something universal in this story. I think people don’t necessarily know how to put a description or word on it, especially in Western culture. We go to great extents not to deal with it. In other cultures, people spend a lot of time mourning a body…literally touching a dead body. We’re like, “we’ll ship it off to the morgue,” somebody else dresses them, somebody else buries them. Not to say that everyone does that, but I think there’s a universal quality to some of the emotions in this story, that I’ve experienced and other people related to, in reading the script.
Julian: Whenever I’ve talked about my dad dying, Brianna talks about that story with her grandma, and then I’m like, okay—it’s not just me. Someone else saw that this is awkward. When you’re watching someone die, people do weird things. And then once we started getting the actors on and other crew members, and you start talking to everyone about it…everyone’s got that story. Then you go, “okay, it’s not just for me.” As you talk to more people in the creative process, then you start to realize, through them, that it works.
Brianna: What happened was he (Julian) wrote this script and uploaded it to a Dropbox that is shared with Ray, one of the actors. He read the script and said, “Oh, this is really good. Did you mean to share this with me?” Julian forgot he had saved it to a shared drive, but after Ray said he liked it, the script started getting shared around a little bit more within the friend group – among people that are filmmakers as well. We’d been talking about “maybe there’s a chance to make it,” sometime in the future, as this nebulous sort of thing.
Brianna: In February, my best friend’s father, Michael, died suddenly from cancer. He very swiftly declined, and in the span of a couple days from going to the hospital—died, very unexpectedly. We got the call that he had died at three o’clock in the morning, and then later that day we were doing errands and Julian’s friend called and said, “Hey remember that script you wrote?” He works at a soundstage up in the valley, and he said, “We have a free weekend. If you want to shoot it, you can come up here and shoot it for free.” It was this day we had just gotten this really horrible news, and then found out we had this opportunity to make this. For me, it felt very cosmic. We knew we’d be flying to a funeral in the next couple of weeks as well, so there were a lot of reasons not to do it, you know? For me, it was more of a motivating reason. This feels right. For whatever reason this feels like a gift we’ve been given right now.
Julian: We had just heard the news not even twelve hours before that call. It almost felt like, if we don’t do this now, what did he die for? It felt like that, like when someone dies—there’s a goodbye you have to prepare, like writing a eulogy. “I don’t know if we can do it in two weeks,” I said. And Brianna said, “Let’s just start trying.”
Brianna: I told my friend, “Hey, we got an opportunity to make the film. We found out the day your dad died.” And she was like, “He’d totally want you to do it.” (Laughs) Which, he really would’ve.
Julian: There’s an energy on-set shooting it. Obviously, it exists in your head for a while. We cast people, some of which I’d worked with before, some I hadn’t – so there’s always some trepidation. We didn’t have time for rehearsal.
Brianna: We had a one-day shoot.
Julian: We didn’t know how this was all gonna shake out. Who knows? But the moment we knew we had something was right when Raymond Lee, the lead actor, does that emotional turn with his father.
Brianna: Ray had talked about “wanting people to kinda be afraid” of what is going to happen when he moves over to that bed.
Julian: We planned to have that shot later in the day, for him to work up to it…but he did it, and we were just staring at the monitor like, “Oh my God.”
Brianna: It was all in one shot. It was the first take.
Julian: My jaw was on the floor. I was stunned. I can’t believe he made that so real.
Brianna: And then we cut, and Julian was like, “Alright, let’s do it again.” (Laughs) Our 1st AD was like, “Can he do that again?”
Julian: We felt really good after we shot it. Ray and the rest of our cast—Alexis, Joe, Gihee, Molly, Matt, Harry—these actors were so generous and gave these unexpectedly grounded, raw performances. It was even better than what I imagined going in.
Brianna: What’s special is people noticing all of the little details that are in the movie that the entire crew thought about. Little touches that highlight the absurdity. One friend noticed the detail of this Asian family having all of their shoes by the door, and the undertakers come in and do not remove their shoes. The pamphlet that the son flips through, with the image of a covered wagon, is a play on a pamphlet called “Gone from my Sight". It is commonly given out in hospices with instructions on navigating the end-of-life process, like a "how-to" manual on grieving. It’s a very similar style picture of a tall ship sailing off onto the horizon, or whatever, but it’s this metaphor of death using a very white and Eurocentric image that’s not something this Asian family would relate to. People picked up on that. It was special knowing that the edit and direction gave people the space to notice that.
Julian: For me, I actually felt a little disconnected from the emotion of it, working on it, because my dad passed away two years ago—so I’ve had a couple years to deal with that grief. I felt a bit more activated, in terms of creative engagement, even though we shot it in the house and the room that my dad died in.
Brianna: It’s not a soundstage. We actually found out on the day of Michael’s funeral—that we lost the location, so Julian spent most of the funeral seeing if he could permit his stepmom’s house.
Julian: I wanted to be present for the funeral. Emotionally, mentally present—but I was on my phone a lot.
Brianna: It was horrible. But we had to keep this train moving. We had to figure this out.
Julian: Which was always how I’d imagined it, of course—when I wrote it, it takes place at my dad’s house. So, when I visited the soundstage I was thinking, how do we make this look lived-in? How do we make this work in a very short amount of time?
Brianna: It was totally a blessing in disguise.
Julian: We wouldn’t have been able to pull it off at all. There’s a lot that could’ve been very hard to deal with emotionally, shooting in such a personal space. It felt kind of weird, to be honest, but I felt very excited to do it—which at some level maybe felt wrong inside me, but I didn’t let that stop me too much. My stepmom was so gracious with us shooting this film in the house, and she was even excited to watch the process. She kept taking behind-the-scenes photos and wanted pictures with the cast! (Laughs)
Julian: I always knew my dad would appreciate it. I think after talking to actors and other people it gets a little bit distanced. They become different people—and it’s not me. None of the characters I even necessarily think is me. I don’t think of that character as my dad, it’s just the scenario. It wasn’t too hard, but of course there’s times when I just wish my dad was still around to share it with. Actually, the morning we were shooting, it was five in the morning—I was picking up coffee and Brianna texted me and said, “I’m super excited we’re doing this together. I’m really proud. I wish your dad was still here and we were making this film about someone else.” I wish he was at the house and we were like, “Hey, we’re shooting here!”
Brianna: (Laughs) Yeah. “Hey, thanks for letting us use your house!”
Julian: Obviously, I would love to share it with my father. It's ironic because it wouldn’t exist without him dying. But I know he would absolutely have loved it.
Raspberry premieres at the Sundance Film Festival, January 28th - February 2nd in “Shorts Program 2”. Tickets are available now, with the Explorer Pass granting virtual access to all 49 short films in this year’s festival, as well as “New Frontiers” and “Indie Series” programs.
"Freeze Frame" by Soetkin Verstegen
An arrestingly beautiful stop-motion animated short by Soetkin Verstegen. Freeze Frame is a captivating example of meticulous craft and disquieting, harmonious textures of picture and sound.
From the artist: “Freeze frame: the most absurd technique since the invention of the moving image. Through an elaborate process of duplicating the same image over and over again, it creates the illusion of stillness. Identical figures perform the hopeless task of preserving blocks of ice. The repetitive movements reanimate the animals captured inside.”
Director, writer, animator: Soetkin Verstegen
Sound: Andrea Martignoni & Michal Krajczok
"No Crying at the Dinner Table" by Carol Nguyen
A brilliant film I had the pleasure of discovering at this year’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, No Crying at the Dinner Table by Carol Nguyen is a spare and meditative portrait of her family. Delicate and unflinchingly honest, Travelling Distribution says it best: “…an emotionally complex and meticulously composed portrait of intergenerational trauma, grief, and secrets in this cathartic documentary about things left unsaid.”
CAST
Thao Nguyen-Duong
Ngoc Nguyen
Michelle Nguyen
Carol Nguyen
CREW
Production : Carol Nguyen (Concordia Film School)
Director : Carol Nguyen
DoP : Walid Jabri
Production Design : Carol Nguyen
Editor : Carol Nguyen, Andres Solis
Sound : Giulio Trejo-Martinez
Music : Arie Van de Ven
Ghost Tape #10 - Virtual Film Screening at Yale University
Special thanks to Erik Harms, Associate Professor on Term of Anthropology & Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University, for his generosity and invitation for myself and my film Ghost Tape #10 to screen at the Southeast Asia Studies Brown Bag this October. It's been a privilege to have these opportunities to interact with students and educators nationwide, and I look forward to their questions!
"sad girl" by Dolan Chorng
I originally saw this arrestingly beautiful short by Dolan Chorng at the Marfa Film Festival in 2017. Captivating in its sharp attention to atmosphere within tightly composed tableaus, sad girl is an eerie comic meditation on teenage longing and burgeoning sexuality.
"Dani" by Lizzy Hogenson - Vimeo Staff Pick
This ingenious animated film weaves intricate stop-motion together with documentary storytelling – a feat that becomes more captivating after every screening. Winner of the Jury Award for Best Animated Short at Palm Springs ShortFest, along with being shortlisted for the “Best Animated Short Film” Oscar at the 2019 Academy Awards, Dani by Lizzy Hogenson is a marvel of craft and imagination. Special thanks to Meghan Oretsky of the Ladies With Lenses Vimeo channel, supporters of this, and the best short films on the Internet written and/or directed by women.
Dani
Created by Lizzy Hogenson
Sound & Music - Ricky Lee Berger
Editor - Robert Panico
Scientific Advisor - Stephanie Shishido
15th German (Göttingen) International Ethnographic Film Festival
Looking forward to some traveling this summer...thanks to the 15th German International Ethnographic Film Festival. I'm thrilled to be counted amongst this acclaimed collection of documentaries that critically address social, political and cultural themes. Ghost Tape #10 will be engaging with a new, European audience this May. What a remarkable program to be a part of!
"La mer à boire" by Charlotte Arene
Stunning stop-motion piece from artist & animation director Charlotte Arene. I can’t get over how beautifully the sound of the waves sweep back and forth in perfect time with the motion of the objects.
From the artist, interviewed by Filmnosis: “I think it encapsulates the anguish and playfulness that are both present in the film; on one hand there’s this light and funny aspect of turning household elements into a kind of seaside scenery and playing with that metaphor, but on the other hand there’s the storm and the heavy sleeping… which all tug at a darkest side of the imagination.”
Home Study - a film by Daniel Lee
When I’m lucky enough to be given it, I treasure the opportunity to artistically express a filmmaker’s vision. Translating their story with illustrations and color can be such a joy, especially when my work is given the honor and trust it needs to fully realize itself, both as an original piece of art and a compliment to the film. Reuniting with my friend and former Killing My Lobster cast member Daniel Lee was a delight, whose short film Home Study will be touring film festivals later this year. Co-starring Courtney Davis and Scott Prendergast, this charming short paints a portrait of a nervous gay couple navigating the adoption process of their first child.
"Shave" reviewed by Mike Everleth, Underground Film Journal
Originally published in Underground Film Journal, September 2nd, 2010:
Embedded above is a chillingly deceptive short film by Sean [David] Christensen called Shave. Disguised as a warm, childhood nostalgia piece, the film nicely uses the metaphor of a father shaving as a meditation on a son’s ultimate disappointment upon learning that his father is just a human being after all.
Personally, I do have a soft spot for films in which audio and visuals are presenting two separate components that are linked together thematically. Christensen uses this technique to great effect particularly towards the end when he lets the audio of his childhood video continue to roll while visually we are looking at the same pool, in a decaying, moss-covered state, in the present day. Using this combination creates a new emotional state, one in which the memory of happier times have turned to rot.
Also really nice in the film is the way Christensen cuts between shots of the swimming pool in the old video with new images of his father dipping his razor in the sink during his big shave. The cuts really flow together to create a real feeling of continuity between the two locations. Also, later in the film, a shot of the empty sink with just some residue and whiskers spread about creates the idea of the pool being similarly drained: Drained of water, drained of memory, drained of happiness.
One has to wonder about the true autobiography of the film. Christensen narrates the film himself, but did any of this actually happen to him? Are these even truly images of himself and his father? The documentary footage — i.e. what Christensen claims is his mother’s old video and even the still photos — are used to lead us to believe that the narrated story is documentary, too, and not a fiction.
However, all that we have seen is called into being suspect when Christensen admits that he is altering his own memories. He refuses to remember his father without a mustache and never allows us to see him without it, either. The one actual video of the man we take to be Christensen’s father jumping off the diving board is too blurry to discern what state his facial hair is in.
Christensen paints a particular visual portrait of his father by only showing us photos of him with facial hair. And he paints a portrait of himself through the narration of a person who refuses to accept his father for the person his dad wants to be, which hints at there’s maybe something more going on here than just a mustache.
By Mike Everleth | Underground Film Journal, September 2nd, 2010.
"MY MOTHER'S EYES" by Jenny Wright
“A story about motherhood and loss in an abstracted world of childhood memory.” Understated, devastating visual storytelling from animator Jenny Wright - an elegant example of the power and impact of a single line on the page.
CREDITS
Animated by Jenny Wright
Composer: Matt Huxley
Sound Designer: Ben Goodall