A few months ago, (over a year now, at time of editing this mess) I was lucky enough to accompany Kierin to the Asian Film Festival of Dallas for the student block, which included films from both high school and college students. The projects ranged drastically in quality, but each filmmaker clearly had passion and an idea to execute. During the Q&A after the screening, they were each asked what advice they would give to other filmmakers. A high school filmmaker Griffin Hudlow, whose black and white film was his first, spoke about how making the film felt good. Despite the outcome, a film is worth making for its own sake, for the creative process you get to experience. And I was sitting there in the audience, misty-eyed, because I had been in a crisis about my art for weeks and now holy shit. This kid understands. He just solved everything by reminding me what I’d forgotten in my job search.
Film festivals, especially of the student kind, are such a great way to feel inspired and hopeful for the future. (editor Arin here again, fuck film festivals.) In my case, it was a reminder for why I did art in the first place. For a while, I felt like obscurity was the death of my art. If nobody sees it, does it matter? Does it have intrinsic value? I need to go viral- I need to be famous to be an important artist. Not only did I feel like my art dies in obscurity but I felt I would too. There is an aspect of this that comes from survival instinct. If I want to make a living in film (as a director, specifically) I would need some degree of success in the public eye. The Tooth had an unexpectedly abysmal festival run. I had put so much time and effort into a film, and truly believed in it, only to be rejected.
This is the true test of an artist: can you create your art in a vacuum, and allow it to stay there?
Current Arin writing here, now. Sorry for the confusion. The Tooth was shown at one venue in its entire festival run, and at that venue, the Spacey microcinema in Dallas, I felt it was enjoyed and appreciated in an entirely new way. I was told by the showrunner that it was programmed as a comedy. The Tooth is very stupid, and it is very important to me as an artist. If you’ve been following, you know Clean is my latest short film. Clean has been rejected twice so far, from one big fest and one little one.
My priorities as a person and as an artist have changed so drastically from the time I first started writing this. I know now, and have accepted that I will not make a living as a director. I do not desire to anymore, because that would entail the loss of my creative control and my beloved environment. Coming up through college, I fell in love with film sets and many many creative people that I still have working relationships with now. If I were to move somewhere and really work In The Industry, set would not be fun as I’ve come to know it. It would be under much more scrutiny, under a much larger budget, which means it would be more important with a lowercase i to say, my bank account or people like my parents, but much less Important with a capital I to me.
Capitalism is not complex, it has simple demands. Products, delivered with speed and consistency, generating an ever-increasing profit. This is poison for an artist. An artist takes time, an artist is human, not machine. But an artist needs to eat and pay rent. I’ve learned now the methods of survival for most artists: work a day job to pay the bills, and pursue art in whatever protected capacity you can. This is crucial. As Griffin Hudlow, student filmmaker said, making things feels good. And going back to creating art in a vaccuum, I have grown slightly more comfortable with this. I have been working this whole time, since my last monthly newsletter. I have had “unsuccessful” shows, “unsuccessful” screenings, and have not sold a single painting. I am creating the art, doing the work, getting to feel good, and it is sitting in my room against the wall in a little pile. Not many people are seeing it, and even less people want it. But that needs to matter less and less to me.
I am more sure now than ever about making films for the rest of my life. But I want to retain what makes this process special to me and to my friends. I want to make art to simply bring it into existence, and to bask in the warmth it radiates upon my humanity.
