Unfiltered // February 2024
How rain, hibernation, and a wall have been affecting my next short
Unfiltered is a quick study of the latest short I’m working on. It’s a behind-the-scenes of my work-in-progress. Inspirations, the idea I’m trying to capture, maybe even the rough script I’m playing with. It’s the process.
The idea for my next video began with the question of, do you regret coming back?
Someone asked me that after October 7th. It was in reaction to what followed in Gaza and the encroaching threat of Israel continuing north (to Lebanon). Did I regret returning to a place that was about to cannonball into another catastrophe?
My answer and the emotions around the question were what I was going to address on screen but I’m finding it hard to come back to the mental space I was in in November when I started working on the script.
I mean, it’s been three additional months of watching carnage and complicit apathy.
Last summer when I decided to dabble with video, I had set a self-imposed goal of producing one per month. Next up was December’s. That didn’t happen but I allowed myself some grace: it was the holidays and, somehow, the carpet bombing not that far away was still happening. It was a lot to take in and sit with.
The anxiety of evacuating Beirut has subsided even though the threats that would induce such an action have not. Why am I so numb to it now? Do I write about that?