The Story:
In 1999, a month after my second birthday, my father had a heart attack and died suddenly at the age of 45. Since then, my mother has done her best to keep him alive for me, telling stories vividly and often. But after she suffered brain injuries from a car accident in late 2016, I began to understand the fragility of relying on her memory to paint a picture of my father. So now, twenty years after his death, I am going to travel up the West Coast to talk to the men who carried my father’s casket at the funeral, his closest friends. Most of them I hardly know, if at all. I’ve always wondered why that is, and how they have remembered my father on their own. This film will capture the journey of meeting them, discovering more about who my dad was, and beginning to understand what it means to grieve for a person you love so deeply, but cannot remember at all.
The Filmmaker:
I am a senior at UCLA, studying film and television and concentrating in documentary. This short film will serve as my senior thesis. I’ve known I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was in elementary school, and realized my passion was in documentary my first year at UCLA. Since then, I’ve pursued documentary through journalistic videos for the Daily Bruin, an internship making videos for the ACLU, and an internship and part-time position as a Research Assistant with the filmmakers behind the documentaries The Hunting Ground and The Bleeding Edge.
The Funds
There are a lot of costs that come with making a documentary. The money I raise in this campaign will be used for these expenses:
- Insurance for equipment and crew
- Travel to and from the Bay Area, Oregon, and Washington
- Meals for crew
- Data storage
- Music licensing/composing
- Festival entry fees
Without your help, it wouldn't be possible for me to complete this project, and I thank you so much!
The Purpose
This story is personal, but it's not just mine. We all experience loss and grief. Which is terrifying, but also natural. While the idea that devastation immediately follows the death of a loved one is understood, I think it's essential to explore this idea of what grief and remembrance look like decades later. I am making this film not just to better understand the father I didn't get to know. I'm making it to understand this feeling that so many of us live with, of grief that evolves and how the people who leave us become a part of us. This story is also yours.