When I was 14 I watched a movie called Babel. I was so affected by it, the memory lives in me as a defining moment in my life and career.
We weren’t allowed to watch TV. Weekends were an exception, but only for 2 hours, and only parent approved channels, which as far as I can remember, extended as far as PBS and Charlie Brown. (♥) Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and The Disney Channel, the cool channels, were all off limits.
My parents both received movie screeners from different guilds. They were dusty DVD’s that lived in the top drawer of a TV cabinet that was always closed. Like I said, we weren’t a TV-watching household, and the one we did have was so small you had to sit a few feet away from it to hear it properly.
When my parents had their backs turned, my brother and I took turns sitting 2 feet away from the TV, volume on low, to watch the forbidden channels. My brother turned to Sponge Bob, (he still claims It’s ahead of it’s time!) and I, the untouched screeners. When I stumbled upon Alejandro Gonzales Inurirtu’s Babel, it was my first experience watching something where multiple narratives weaved in and out of each other in the most beautiful, unexpected, human way. I had no idea movies could be made that way. It opened something up in me that still seeks to emulate that feeling oneness in my art - the gentle reminder that we are always 1 degree of separation away from each other, even when it seems that we are the most far apart.
Jessica Andrews says it best, There are invisible things drawing us close. I believe that.