Be Kind, Rewind

Going to Blockbuster as soon as I was picked up from school on the weekends, my father would suggest that I watch every 80’s movie he loved as a kid. Movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), The Lost Boys (1987), and Footloose (1984) started my borderline obsession with film. I soaked them in like a sponge and felt personally attached to the stories and characters I watched over and over. The ability for films to create nostalgia and make me feel like I was a part of these grand stories made me fall in love with movies and TV as a whole. 

I decided to marry these ideas of nostalgia from movies with my artistic interest in cinematic photography by creating three hypothetical films based on my actual life experiences. I used these “films” to contextualize life events and difficult emotions and to grow through them; While, hopefully, inspiring others to view themselves as the main character too. I assigned specific genres to specific personal experiences of mine to help define them as independent films. In all, I created three films: A horror film about learning to cope with grief, a coming of age film about walking the odd line of leaving the teenage years and becoming an independent adult, and a stylized drama film about the tension of being an introverted personality. With these films, I want my viewers to be reminded of life's complexities and the beauty that films create to remind us that while we are so different, we are so much the same. 

Overall, I want people to look back on their own lives and know they can be the main character of their own movie