Reflecting on 'The House of Mariana y Gabriel'

I rewatched the film a bit ago in order to jog my memory for this interview I'm about to do. I hadn't watched it in a good while, so it was good to watch it again. Like all of my films, it's certainly a timestamp of who I was and what I was going through at the time.

The party scene in particular still makes me cringe - for some reason I tend to write these big scenes but still don't really know how to time people dancing to eventually what the music ends up being. But for 'The Return' I was able to pull this off hopefully better, since the scene is a memory. 

Overall though I'm still fairly happy with THOMYG. I haven't had enough space from it still though in order for me to view it a bit more objectively. I do think the characters are solid, as well as the cinematography and production design - it was certainly my first fully envisioned film, which I can see onscreen. I still appreciate the completely non-verbal subtext of Mariana's struggle with her faith, which I hope that someone, somewhere, picked up on. It very much represents what I was going through myself at the time (once again), with Islam.  

I love that the film features some of my brother Fahad's music. It makes it even more personal. I don't think either of my bros have seen the film still. I want to watch it with them, though I know that they will act like my bros and probably drop annoying comments throughout, so perhaps it's better they watch without me and tell me later what they think :-D Let's see. It's too bad that we are all spread so far apart from each other, as they would've probably seen it by now otherwise perhaps, I like to think.

This also makes me think, that it's obviously a film about family, about siblings. A very different sibling situation from mine, but about siblings nonetheless, and to some extent all sibling dynamics do share some things in common perhaps. It's also a story about loss - which I would devastatingly experience myself, just some months after shooting the film and during it's editing. It's eerie, how much the grief and loss in THOMYG foreshadowed what I was about to experience myself - in a different way obviously, but again, grief and loss is extremely universal.

Rewatching the film does give me a lot of happy memories as its director. It's strange now that I look back, how much certain things were occupying my mind and thus the film. I'm glad I spilled it all in the film though, as I think it became stronger. But it took a lot out of me. And so did the next film, even more so. My editor on the current film told me that I make films in order to understand myself and the world, and she's completely right. It's why I have to keep making films, despite all of the difficulties - I have to get whatever I'm going through, out of me, and into this form. I just wonder if there's a way to do it where it doesn't have to be so draining each and every time.

Breaking

Documentaries can get away with almost anything. The form can be very loose. Fluid. Messy. Especially once you get in the arenas of hybrids, of exploring the grey space between what is supposedly fiction and non-fiction. "All stories are fiction", I have on a postcard near me. And at the same time, so much of fiction is based on truth, is grounded in reality. They really aren't that separate, or different - just like Democrats and Republicans, fiction films and documentaries have much more in common than they don't. 

But back to form itself. Doc films, hybrid films, are able to break form, and create new forms. They can almost do anything really. Fiction films on the other hand though, are much more limited. Much more straight and narrow. I see now that my previous film, a short fiction film "The House of Mariana y Gabriel", is my best example and attempt at making a so-called straight fictional film. 

What pushes it's edges are also though what makes it such a straight fiction film - the cinematography, sound, and production design, and the performances themselves, were all made to be as immersive as possible. Some of these elements lent themselves over to "enhanced realism" which me and my DP came up with, rather than just regular old realism - we tried to push it, to enhance it. And so the wide wide aspect ratio especially, which went hand in hand with the production design, with the use of colour. I'd say same with the sound design. Probably the most grounded element actually was the acting itself, coaxed by many rehearsals and discussions. All of this was part of my attempt to make the film as cinematic and immersive as possible, for the viewer to basically forget that they're even watching a film, for them to be completely sucked into the story and the lives of the characters.

I think I achieved that. That might sound cocky, but those were my goals, and I believe I achieved them.

However, I've since broken from that. "The Return" makes the viewer acutely aware that they are watching a film, of something that is created, and hopefully makes them wonder which parts may or may not be fabricated. The making of the film is in the film itself, and always has been, since day one. It had to be. Clearly then, I'm no longer going for complete immersion, or a perfection of cinema. The film is messy, fluid, and at times jarring, all purposefully so. I actively want the viewer to be jolted a bit, to be thrown off at times - not completely, just pushed a bit here and there.

And all of that is possible, since it isn't a conventional fictional film. Nor however, is it a conventional non-fiction film. Far from it, I hope. My goal was to break form, to basically do whatever the hell I want, thinking that eventually it will come together and work. I wouldn't call it experimental. It's not an experiment. It is still another example of controlled chaos.

So while doc films and hybrids are able to break form and create new forms - why can't fiction films? I believe that they can, and that's what I want to explore next. I hope that my next script and film, while being fiction, will still be able to break form in some way. I explored this a bit in a TV pilot that I wrote - why aren't multiple narratives possible? I believed they could be, and that's what I wrote. And that's what I hope to do for what I have in mind next, in some ways - showing how a fiction film doesn't have to stick to the straight and narrow. Non-linearity is now seen and accepted to some extent, but I want to go further than that. I want to continue to break things. And just do whatever the hell I want. Again, it's all purposeful, and isn't random. 

It's not even about what's this grey space, between non-fiction and fiction - maybe it is that, but furthering it. Thinking of time in different ways, but not just about non-linearity. How to examine a character, the same character, in more ways than one. I'm itching to write this thing. Which I will once "The Return" is finally in picture lock.

And the current film is what instigated all of this, this creative reset, completely triggered by a very upsetting, traumatic, and life-defining event. And when such an event happens again, I wonder if I'll be reset once more.

The moment we are living in.

Let's just call him "45".

45 aka Bunkerboy holed himself up as protestors gathered outside and as tax-payer funded forces defended him. As the protests have continued, the White House is essentially a fortress, with its lights out.

This is the moment we are living in.

Journalists and reporters are getting attacked and arrested. Sometimes live, on camera. Black reporters especially. Journos and their crew are also getting teargassed. What country are we living in? Once again, the notion of what a "first world country" is versus a "third world country" is a pure fallacy and folly. The press is getting attacked, here, now. This is the moment we are living in.

Daily curfews. Curfews. I'm privileged enough to not have lived in a warzone, to not have lived in a city under curfew before. Yet here we are, under curfew. Not just in Los Angeles, but in dozens of cities across this manifest-destiny-country. Will we get used to curfews? This is the moment we are living in.

How do we learn about such curfews? We get what are called amber alerts, on our smartphones. They BLARE and DISRUPT. Before, such alerts were sent out perhaps every few weeks or so - around here, usually of a missing person every now and then. Now, we get them everyday, often multiple times a day, often with conflicting times about when the curfew starts. I live in a part of LA where one area might have a 6pm or 4pm curfew, but around the corner, the curfew could be at 1pm. Most of the time, these alerts don't arrive until a few minutes before the actual curfew begins, which is suspicious. This is the moment we are living in.

Let's not forget of course, about the amount of militarized police on our streets. And with them, the National Guard. Their trucks and tanks. They are ugly. They're meant to be ugly. And imposing, and intimidating. This is the moment we are...

Helicopters overhead, always buzzing. Often they sync up with the wailing sirens. WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC, STILL. Before let's say about a week ago, I understood the sirens to be related to Covid patients, as the number of cases in LA county continue to increase. Now, these sirens and their playmates the helicopters, are all in overdrive simply because people are choosing to express themselves out on the street. The moment we are living in...

The pandemic, the virus, isn't going anywhere. It's re-surging as I type this, as we breathe, as some of us stop breathing. Hospital and emergency workers couldn't get masks. But our militarized police forces? They didn't seem to have any problem. They've also been pulling off the masks of protestors and are macing them in the face. This is the moment that we are all living in.

Oh yeah, and 45 wants to make this all even more of a dictatorship - on top of curfews, amber alerts, the attacks on the press, and the national guard already being deployed, 45 wants the full military out on the streets of America, to demolish protestors essentially. Even though we have a right to protest.

It's a dictatorship already, and it has been, and the government's been throwing up fascism for a long time. This is the moment we are living in.

Let's zoom in. Allow me to navel-gaze for a bit. Things have felt off since the beginning of last year when I lost my father. Life hasn't been the same since, no matter how smiley or cheery or friendly I may have been at times. The grief doesn't actually go anywhere, it's always there, always. So with these previous months of a pandemic, quarantine and lockdown, life was already warped and just became more and more warped, as we all went into social isolation. Yet we were all still expected to function, and for some, still expected to work, and work was actually helpful for me at times, and a great distraction, and a fair amount of productivity even happened.

But, this pandemic has turned a corner. As the country started to stupidly re-open we are now in a whirlpool of absurdity: we are witnessing what's truly a dictatorship showing its force, people are protesting while wearing masks, businesses are getting boarded up which changes our physical and visual landscape (and I'm okay with the "shopping" that's been happening), but yet we are supposed to fully function, keep our head in the sand, and get on. Perhaps at times, we'll need to do exactly that, in order to stay sane. But at other times, maybe we just don't want to, or can't.

In a zoom video chat with nearly 350 students, staff, and faculty, one after another, black students testified about their pain. Pain. Pain that I'll never be able to understand. The pain was there for all to see, with their tears, or choked up voices, and here they are, and we are, all of us separate and in our own homes, because of this quarantine, this pandemic. Black students testifying and choosing to testify, and showing true vulnerability, in front of us all, on our screens as we watched and listened to them from their homes, from their places of isolation. About how much we don't listen, of how much erasure happens, of how much they hurt. Of pain. It was heartbreaking.

This is the moment that we are living in.

On my relationship with India

In 2008 I spent 6 weeks in India. I was 22. I visited relatives, travelled on my own, and was in culture shock for most of the time, as it had been 12 years since I was last in India. After this chaotic post-undergrad trip, I returned to America, feeling that I wouldn't ever be able to comment on anything happening in India. Who was I to do so? I was an outsider, regardless of my name and family; I didn't grow up in India, I couldn't ever possibly understand even one issue there with nuance and depth, no matter how hard I could try.

So I didn't try, and India remained a mystery, and a faraway place that my parents visited every few years. Once in a while, I would chat briefly on the phone, and later, briefly via a video call, to an older relative. My father was always in constant touch with his family and friends, no matter where they were or how long it had been since their last meeting, while most of my mother's family still resides in India. Their ties to India remained strong, but for me and my brothers, we had a distant connection to our parents' home country, if at all.

This is the case for many im/migrant children. Though me and my siblings are fluent in Urdu, and we understand the customs and indeed practice them if needed, to code-switch if needed, there never seemed to be any real point or reason to try to stay connected to India, to our family there, in any way. No need really, to even visit, because after all, it takes so long to get there, and it's so expensive, and who has the time? Going back to India seemed far off, and not important.

That all changed, almost exactly a year ago, in about 24 hours from now.

My father died in an Indian hospital bed, in Bihar. My parents had been visiting relatives, in fact they had returned for a shaadi, when Papa came down with pneumonia and with complications, passed away within days. We were summoned to get to India, when he was admitted to the hospital. By the time me and my oldest brother finally arrived, we pulled back the hospital room curtain and saw that he was gone, that he had died just a couple of hours before. My father was buried the next day, and lies next to his parents, my paternal grandparents; a few meters away, my maternal grandfather is also in the same cemetery. Their kaberstaan is part of a dargah, next to a shrine of a Muslim saint from the 13th century.

The last time I had been in India, was that post-college trip back in 2008. It was now just over 10 years later, I was now 32, and my father was forever gone, just like that. He had returned home - fully returned, and I also as a result had to make my own return.

We left after a week, because what was the point in staying? The day my father died, the day that I got to Bihar, I said that I never wanted to come back to Bihar, in the midst of my angry sobbing. I was angry at India, at Bihar. Angry. Furious. Thankfully, I quickly got past blaming the place and understood that I might as well come to terms with what happened, and since Papa died smiling, he must be happy, truly, he must be with his family.

In fact, I was able to make another return to India for several weeks at the end of 2019. It was much needed, as many pleasant memories were created in the places where we had just experienced so much despair and misery just a few months prior. I didn't feel any culture shock, probably because this was my 2nd time in India within a year; indeed I felt fairly competent at being able to navigate, figure and find things out, and I came to understand and appreciate the South Asian way of knowing how to wait.

What happened a year ago instantly and automatically changed the relationship my brothers and I have with our parents' country, forever. India's no longer a distant land. India is where our father died and where he is buried. Not just our grandparents, but our own father, subhanAllah. And because of this, we are also more connected to our Indian relatives, who miss our father and also empathize with our loss; many of them also witnessed my father's demise, death and burial.

This time, after coming back to America, I have a need and a want to feel connected to India. I want to keep returning in order to visit Papa's grave. I want to stay in touch with my family, to try to follow in Papa's footsteps in that regard. I hope to one day make another work that is set in and filmed in India. I am continuing to learn how to read and write in both Hindi and Urdu scripts.

And this time, I also miss the chaos and the noise. Time seemed to stretch in India, I felt present in every minute and every moment, whereas my last few weeks in Los Angeles have seemed to melt together. I found that in India, whether I was in rural Bihar or in more obviously rowdy places such as Kolkata and Bombay, the noisiness and the sheer numbers of people made me hyper-aware of my surroundings, and so I stayed present. I stayed aware. In the moment. Back in LA however, I find it to be a very quiet city, and I have gone back to being very much in my own head. There are no street peddlers hawking their goods at 6:30am, to wake you up and get your day started.

My mind is also fixated on India because a week after my mother and I got back to the States, the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now Act) was passed. This, coupled with the promise of a nation-wide National Registry of Citizens, effectively puts India's 200 million Muslims at risk of being rendered stateless. (Go read up to educate yourself, if you've no idea what any of this means). I've been following the news in India because, well, I come from an Indian Muslim family, I was just in India, and plan to keep returning, because my relationship with India has now forever changed.

I find myself unable to be present at being back in Los Angeles, at being back in America, as my mind is preoccupied with the Indian protests and the resulting violence and attacks on students and Muslims, and my mind is also busy with thinking about my family. It's been a year now since Papa died; how can we help our mother to resettle? Her life has changed the most. With being back on campus and back in classes after 6 months, I know that I need to finish out my degree, but for so many reasons, not just a graduate student sense of "senioritis", my mind is checked out.

My hair's been turning grey. I'm no longer a wide-eyed 22 year old, staring at cows being on the road. I am still very naive about many things, but unlike at 22, I no longer feel that I shouldn't speak out on what's happening in India, that I somehow shouldn't care, that it doesn't affect me or my family. Because it does. It directly does.

Sanford Meisner on acting

A surprisingly real struggle of a book to get through...

Intro to chapter 2:
Meisner: What’s the first thing that happens when they build the World Trade Center - you know that building?
Male student: They dig a hole.
Meisner: Well, of course they dig a hole. They don’t glue to the sidewalk! What’s the first thing they did when they built the Empire State Building?
Female student: They had to put down a foundation first.
Meisner: They had to put down a foundation on which...
Female student: ...they built the building.
Meisner: ...they built the building.

Page 68:
"I want to show you something. John, come over here."
John leaves his seat and stands next to the desk. Meisner moves around it to stand next to him.
"Now turn around," he says. "Make your position as firm and as rigid as you can. If necessary, hold on to the desk but make yourself absolutel steadfast."
"Okay."
"I don't think you're solid enough. Are you?"
"Yeah."
Meisner places the palms of both hands on John's shoulders and attempts to budge him. "I don't make any impression on him!" he says. "I'll try again. John, do the same thing."
Again John holds on to the edge of the desk, so tightly that the knuckles of his hands turn white.
"He's stiff!" Meisner says, and then spells the word "S-t-if!" The class laughs. "Now, John, relax."
John lets go of the desk, turns and shakes the tension from his arms and shoulders. Meisner gives him a firm but gentle shove and John takes two long, loose steps forward.
"He's responsive! Do you see that? Relax." Meisner pushes him again, and again John ambles forward. "He's responsive to what I do. Thank you, John. Sit down."

Page 72:
"What we're looking for is the picking up not of cues but of impulses. One doesn't pick up cues, one picks up impulses."

Page 110:
"You're too polite, and in acting politeness will get you nowhere! Look, find in yourselves those human things which are universal. Don't act out what you see on television!"

Page 114:
"Acting is a scary, paradoxical business. One of its central paradoxes is that in order to succeed as an actor you have to lose consciousness of your own self in order to transform yourself into the character in the play."

Page 127:
Ralph enters the room, closes the door quietly and stands still for a moment before taking off his coat. He is visibly upset and slams his coat onto the bed before crossing to the table, where he remembers leaving his notebook. Its absence is a genuine surprise to him, and the resulting exercise, though brief, has vitality.
"All right," Meisner says after a few minutes. "Now tell me, what did I do? Not what did you do, but what did I do?"
"You made something happen," Ralph says. "You made me want something. You created a need and made it impossible for me to -"
"I made it more alive," Meisner says. "Right? How did I do that?"
"You gave me something to do."
"I made you come from something that had happened, right?"
"Right. You made it more specific."
"And what happened because of that?"
"The scene came more alive. It got on the edge of something more important."
"It came to life. Were you working off each other?"
"Yes."
"Ralph, what I did to you - and this is no disgrace, quite the contrary - was to pull you back almost to the beginning. Why did I do that?"
"Because I got lost."
"So I gave you a compass."
"Right."

Page 170:
"What you do and how you feel about the script which makes you do what you do determines the character...Character, you can say, is determined by what you do...The emotion comes with how you're doing what you're doing. If you go from moment to moment, and each moment has a meaning for you, the emotion keeps flowing."

Page 178:
"The first thing you have to do when you read a text is to find yourself - really find yourself. First you find yourself, then you find a way of doing the part which strikes you as being in character. Then, based on that reality, you have the nucleus of the role. Otherwise every shmuck from Erasmus Hall High School is an actor because everyone there knows how to read...Anybody can read. But acting is living under imaginary circumstances. A script - I may have said this before - a script is like a libretto. You know what a libretto is, don't you?"

Page 186:
"Why does any artist begin doing what she's made for? Even she doesn't know. She's just following a need within herself." (Gender corrected by me)

Page 191:
"There is always some juice in the trouble barrel, no matter how full the talent barrel is. The trouble cannot transpose itself into talent without leaving some residue behind, even in the most talented of human beings."