Unfiltered // March 2024
Does love keep slipping away? Where does it go?
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.
I published the February video just last week so I’m a little behind on this installment of Farrah’s short films. However, I had some scattered ideas for the March short while editing the Feb one. This edition of Unfiltered will be a collection of loose thoughts as I’m still in the writing phase.
I watched Past Lives (again). It’s a beautifully-shot film that doesn’t go the classic Hollywood route when it comes to a tale of former flames crossing paths later in life. The pace and color palette are what I loved most. It is a rainy day kinda movie that uses diffused, natural light and silhouettes. It forces the viewer to slow down through its long pauses.
Then, at the Grammy’s, we got to revisit a 90s anthem: Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, performed with Luke Combs. It was the first time I sat with the lyrics of a song I’ve long known: they’re about the life we imagine for ourselves in our early days and what we have to let go of as time passes.
I increasingly feel that we live many lives in one —or many seasons, at least. Any time I walk our streets, I’m reminded of insignificant snapshots that can be stitched together to form the tapestry of my youth here. The first bar I went to (37 degrees), the Subway we used to pretend to be healthy at during undergrad (cookies), the remnants of a failed uprising (graffiti). This is probably what anyone experiences in a place where they’ve spent many years but there is a temporary nature of memories in Beirut. Things are quickly torn down or forcefully erased and then replaced by newer, shinier things. With these changes, parts of our past lives slip away.