I don’t think it’s as simple as leaving because of “ambition” or “passion” or these buzzwords that we often use to describe artists. I’ve spent a lot of time journaling and trying to unpack a spiritual relationship with cinema, which really straddles the line of sounding like something that would maybe cause one to stick two fingers down their own throat, but it’s the only way I’ve been able to articulate my relationship with this art form, which has been the bedrock and guiding light of my life; the “thing” larger than myself that provides a sense of direction and purpose.

“Give me the deeper understanding of who I am…”

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see a 35mm print of The Mission at the Roxy Cinema in Tribeca; the theater where I’ve surely spent the most time watching movies since theaters reopened in 2021. I’ve wanted to see Chris Menges’ cinematography projected on film and hear Ennio Morricone’s score in surround sound for years, and I appreciated the film more in this viewing; not just for its formal prowess but also for its delineation between spirituality and the dangers of institutionalized religion (which makes the Vatican’s “canonization” of the film all the more remarkable in my eyes). 

There was at least one person in the audience who wanted to see it even more than I did, though. The screening was not crowded, maybe 10 or 12 people, but I recognized an older gentleman sitting in the front row. When I told the person behind the counter how excited I was to see the film (and that I was moving to Seattle), they mentioned that someone flew from Seattle to see the movie projected on film. I realized that this was a regular at the cinematheque/nonprofit film center I spent years volunteering with in Seattle when I was a teenager; still my most formative film school to date.

I don’t know if this man, who I’ve never spoken to, would describe his relationship with film as “spiritual”, but I saw myself in this need or desire to travel for an experience with a film that would be nourishing on a deeper, more metaphysical level. It also reminded me about the cyclical nature of relationships — I’ve still never spoken to this man, but there was a time in my life where I recognized him monthly (maybe even weekly) as a regular, and clocked that I didn’t have to ask if he was a member or not when I sold him a ticket. My life has since changed in dramatic ways (I am, for starters, no longer in high school), but here we are, at the movies again, together but separately. People come back.

And I wonder how he’s changed since the last time he’s seen that movie on a 35mm print — a print that was surely from the film’s release in 1986; a print that has stayed the same while his life has changed around it. Two years ago, I watched a print of Wings of Desire at Metrograph — my favorite film if I had to choose one, and a film that uncoincidentally is a reckoning with spirituality. But I had not seen the movie on a 35mm print since I first watched the movie as a 14 year-old, at that same nonprofit film center in Seattle. I journaled about it at the time:

It could have been the same print as that first screening. It’s extremely, overwhelmingly unlikely, but it’s technically possible. Like a boomerang. I’m 26, I’ve made three films of my own, and I still see more of myself in this film than possibly any of the other thousands I’ve seen since I was 14, learning how to wrangle the anxiety that a movie made me feel like it was okay to live with. The film didn’t change as I grew, not technically, but my understanding grew and expanded overtime. Not just my understanding of the film’s political, spiritual touchstones and references and intertextual elements, but the understanding of my own relationship with it. It’s followed me — out of Seattle and to Sarajevo, Hamburg, Bucharest, New York, hell, even Berlin, where I walked underneath the tram tracks as a 19 year-old, only five or so years removed from that first screening but it felt like 20; wondering “are these them?”. The growth of my artistic identity, spiritual identity, romantic identity; my political identity, which is sickened and disgusted by Peter Handke’s apologism and defense of genocide in the Balkans, and yet despite those monstrous, reprehensible views, he was integral to crafting the most beautiful, beloved object in my life, and to quote the critic Walter Chaw speaking about Miles Davis, “There's some kind of hope in that for us.” The film has *technically* stayed the same, but it continues to give and stay in dialogue with me as I embark on my own life. Was it just the 35mm, or is this object really alive?

I sold about half of my records, and gave away most of my books, too — objects that have stayed the same as I’ve grown around them — or with them. Marking a new phase out of NYC that I truly do not know if it is temporary or not. 

This is a production diary, not a moving diary.

But it’s both, because the two are intertwined; inseparable for me — “leaving” is inseparable from the art form that has chosen me; from the process that is going to dictate the decisions of where I live, how I spend my money, who I surround myself with. I don’t think it’s going away, and I don’t think it’s going to get any easier. But the movie will exist. In some form. Who knows what, but it will exist.

Meeting with a potential production designer in a few weeks. Baby steps, it’s a marathon not a sprint, etc., but even prospective movement feels good.

(And for those wondering, I did not sell my movies. Even I have limits.)