Alice in Pandemic (2021)

In the summer of 2020 I wanted to do something. I was rereading my childhood books and I found Alice in Wonderland especially interesting as our world was flipped upside down. I watched many different versions of Alice. I especially liked the BBC 1966 version and Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 mixed animated version. They are both quiet and slow, showing the strangeness and wonder of life. I wrote the script, storyboarded, identified locations, and searched for people who were willing, able, and felt comfortable doing this during COVID. I created many of the props and costumes for the film. We shot the film on 16mm with a camera found in a second-hand store. I directed it, edited it, and animated some scenes. Looking at it today, my version is faster and louder than my favorites and how I would do it now. I wanted to make wonderland an exciting world to jump into, especially compared to the slow one we were living in. I like what I have done. It was my first large project.

Kamakura (2023)

My grandmother passed away Christmas 2022. The following summer my family and I spent six weeks in Japan cleaning her house. I created a documentary of our trip. My Japanese family must've thought I was crazy, with my super 8mm camera and microphone. I was very inspired by sound, and recorded the noises of our time there, preschoolers singing next door, cicadas, crows, and nightingales, and people talking. With help from my audio engineering teacher, I went through hours of audio and identified what I wanted to use. I found a song by Lamp, a Japanese band whose music fit the feeling I was looking for, rearranged the song, and recorded my friends as they played it. Visually, I was inspired by collage, layering the film with found photos, papers, and drawings to give context. I also layered words, inspired by the calligraphy in old samurai films. I chose my mother’s words “勿体無いの家になちったね,” this house is filled with objects that we kept because they have life left to live or purpose to fulfill, however now we have to clean. The main audience for this film is myself and my family.