Brief Notes on My 25th Year of Life and First Semester of Grad School

Yesterday I completed my 25th go around at a full year of life. A year ago I had been depressed about turning 25, entering my “mid 20’s” feeling beaten, defeated, and mostly bored with life. Now a days, I feel like I’m 19 again, I’m a “freshman” in college in a new city so to speak, except this time around I’m legally allowed to drink and I appreciate it more, the last three years, spent working in banking seem like a distant memory.

This is not to say it was all bad, or even a little bad, a year ago faced with the prospects of an industry that need heavy government support it seemed like a good time to reconsider life: I wasn’t going to get ahead in this storm. Living in New Jersey/the NYC area I feel that it’s either sink or swim, luckily Buffalo has a lot of people floating by, making art and media with the intention of exhibiting it, not to get rich but just to show it and exchange ideas. This sounds ideal but it, like most things is also a bit flawed.

So in my 25th year of life I recall having two lives: well two professional lives that overlapped for a brief period that was the production phase of Hollow Spaces, which was hellish (given how little time we had and other obligations to work around, making a movie would be great if time wasn’t a factor), but then again having a day that the shoot needed to be done by was motivating to say the least, not only was it done but reshoots would be hard to grab living some 350 miles away (Ercan to his credit volunteered to shoot second unit in New Jersey if it didn’t get finished).

25 was a pretty good year in retrospect. I sensed in middle school I was forming an identity that’s still shifting and changing. After the first day of grad school, where I felt maybe a little intimidated I realized something: I had to continue to do what I do, not in a bubble but I had to continue to work on my ideas, techniques, skills, and abilities with the input of like-minded people. The issue I think in the first semester I had was that the DMS MFA program is so diverse, so wide a net of students, some working on projects that I’m not sure I truly understand the value of at all times, others engaging in behavior that scares the shit out of me (legally I’m not sure I can talk about our studio opening).

If anything unlike a traditional film school environment where everyone is competing to be selected to direct a thesis film produced by the school, or to be “the best” or “most well connected” - UB is anything but that. If anything it’s perhaps too academic at times, cynics can chalk film studies up to Grade A B.S. - at times it can be, sure. The work I’ve always been interested in connects the academics and the general audience: I’m interested in getting an emotional reaction out of anybody and everyone - from the guy with the PhD in film to the women with a GED. This isn’t to say that all film or media should do this, play it safe, dumb itself down.

I very much like the philosophy of Participant Media: they make genre films with a social change point of view - studio features with established actors and talent that aren’t Lifetime-style movies or After School Specials, but entertainment films that sneak in a message. Granted one can make heavily experimental work with no entry for non academics to prove a point about structure or form, I’m not dismissing those films. But I’d take a teen comedy over a dry documentary if they’re both asking the same questions and opening my eyes to the same issue (look at ATL, it’s a wonderful film confronts identity, race, and power).

These were nothing new, but at UB I’m learning and am challenged to make work - I needed this even if I feel too old sometimes. I have yet to re-calcuate my “real age” as I had done when I turned 25, but based on my life style I had the body age of a 17 year old. If I’ve aged a year (although I’ve taken the recommended steps of eating less red meat and flossing daily), then I’m really only 18: a college freshman, living the life style of a college freshman. While I’ll avoid the binge drinking, but I’ll gladly partake in the spirt of adventure that comes with the age*.

*Meanwhile everyone else is getting married, having kids, growing up, being adults. Fuck that shit.