looking Inward
Looking outward
This shorts program is about how human beings are always faced with the challenge of having to connect their independent experiences of their internal lives with those they experience in the external world, and how the intersection and opposition between the external and internal world can spark passion, hope, energy, and vitality in one’s life, or can lead to fear, anxiety, regression, pain, alienation, and confusion.
Embrace It - Kirthi Nath (6 min and 40 sec)
Through a shifting collage of images, words, art, and photographs, this film takes experiences of the world and suspends them in the timelessness of memory and unfettered hope.
A Boy's Mouth - PJ Raval (5 min 28 sec)
Beginning in silence and creating a rhythm out of words and texture, this film tells an unfortunately familiar story of the desperation that lonliness creates. The teller of the story and the boy within are not so different from one another, but while one lives outside and goes to school, the other is trapped in silence within, in need of help from without.
Slip of the Tongue - Karen Lurn (4 min 5 sec)
A rapid fire spoken word performance narrates an exchange between a self-concious but interested young man and a self-aware young woman in this story, and a question about “ethnic makeup” becomes a literal, metaphorical, philosophical, and sociological chance to witness all of the things that make up a person’s foundation, under their appearance.
The Apollos - Nick Parker and Jazmin Jones (5 min 58 sec)
Starting from the curiosity of a class skipping high school senior, the eagerly vocal participants from the class of 81’ that helped push for the passing of Martin Luther King Jr. day into law, The Apollos, tell the history of the events that they experienced in fighting for the recognition of this rightful day. Their participation and their feelings all come to light as their struggle reveals how people can find determination in opposition, and take their feelings within and create an effect in the world.
The Midnight Hours - by Edgardo Cervano-Soto (8 min)
In an interlaced and black and white reverie of thought, hopes, fears, dreams, and introspection, this film looks into the fear that one isn’t good enough, fears about the degeneration of human nature, and the hope that redemption can come with time, patience, and surviving, one day at a time.
I Promise Africa - Jerry Henry (2 min 45 sec)
In the shadow of 9/11, this film presents a painfully real tragedy of one filmmaker’s promise to return to an African village of orphans to show them a finished documentary about them. In an honest admission of sadness and helplessness, the filmmaker is unable to return for one very important and external reason, and it is up to the viewer to never forget the promise he made.
The Chestnut Tree - Hyun-Min Lee (4 min 8 sec)
Joyful, playful, tear-jerking, and whimsical, this film lets the heroine and the viewer become a child again as she dreams of a time and place where life is full of playful animals, a large and resourceful chesnut tree, and a very loving mother who still lives on in her memories.
Curator’s Statement: In this program I wanted to convey the profound problem of being able to experience both one’s internal expectations and feelings while still trying to engage in an impersonal, exterior world. I tried to pair or group the ordering of these films based on their subjects, style, content, and how they engage with this theme of looking inward and looking outward. The first pair have a similar form of production where both are created out of a collage and abstract visuals, though the first is much more positive and the second is much more distressing and introspective. The second pair act together in a way by looking into identity and how very loud voices are able to oppress and effect even the very thoughts and expectations of individuals, and make them feel alienated because they aren’t a part of the “majority”. This idea that there is something without that is affecting oneself within, and the struggle to overcome the voices of oppression by finding something within to counteract that is an important way to engage with the theme. The film following that is by far the most representative of the theme as it is literally about a person who is looking at his own internal self and is trying to understand his external relationship to the world at the same time. The idea of sin, redeption, human nature and corruption play very strongly as the world seems to represent opportunities for the hero to prove himself, to himself, and it also scares him at the same time. Thus, there is a strong split between the world within and the world without, and how the two add and create conflict for the main character. “I Promise” seems to present a situation where the filmmaker was looking at their own personal relationship to a very real and external epidemic that prevented him from living up to an expectation of himself. In this case, the solution is, for him, to bring his experience to others and thus share his internal disappointment in the light of human tragedy, with those outside of him, and thus bring attention to HIV in Africa in a very relatable, human, and palbable way. The last film seemed to be the best thing to end with as it is so light-hearted and cheerful, even with the tragic nature of the main character’s mother being revealed as deceased, as it brings back the possibilities, energy, imagination, and wonder of childhood. Not to mention, the pairing of the last two based around childhood and the world are linked as well, and the theme of dreams being an internal version of the outside world also plays heavily into the theme of Looking inward, Looking outward.
