Girl In A Glass Box

"The unconventional world of an aerial dancer turns up side down with the tragic death of her seven year old son."

Guilt. How the death of a loved one can change our lives for ever. How do you fix what can't be fixed? How do you face it? Make peace with it? Accept responsibility and find a way to live with it?  

"The knowledge...

...that everyday there's something more to learn, something higher to reach, something new to see of others. Makes each day infinity precious.
Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment; a vivid imagination as well as a griffon reality; the desire to communicate one's own experiences and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen."
-Uta Hagen

We have the need to create, to make journeys as artist. Because, we are constantly trying to get a better understanding of who we are. It's a need we are born with and not something we found on the way...

Alice Miller...

has been my greatest reference when I create characters. She's my understatement behind every line. We are who we are for a reason. Humans are multidimensional. We have layers and layers of silence that makes us unique. So should every character in and out of page in order to be affective and generate emotions.

“In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual “wisdom,” we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.” 
-Alice Miller

"Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings. Those who are intimidated will be intimidating. Those who are humiliated will impose humiliation. And those whose souls are murdered will murder."
-Alice Miller

And the quotes go on and on proving one thing. We are who we are based on our past and we do filter the world we live in through past experiences. So should every character from every prospective of storytelling. Of course we soul search, we accept, we evolve, we become a better version of ourselves. Hopefully we overcome our tragic flaw. Hopefully we break free... So should characters...
I choose to believe that we come back again and again until our souls get completed and the older I am getting the more I see it and feel it. And I can choose to incorporate it or not. 
The bottom line is you can have a so so structure wise story but if the world is multidimensional and the characters are layered. When you come from a place of truth you have a great film and an even stronger story to tell. 

"The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you"
- Lawrence Durrell

Through The Red Doors...

Rania Khaliq, my little Rania...when Nikki told me about Manaal's film Through The Red Doors I was so deep into Olufemi that nothing could get me out of the Oli mode. I made it a point that the only character I will give life to will be Olufemi, even if it was my last one. I was polite so I said e-mail it to me. A rush of goose bumps invaded my body. To give life to a character that is at the top of her game, sitting on a throne all alone...her hard life and how she became so emotionally detached, how she got there and to top it all, she's in her late fifties, I have no wrinkles... To have to enter the screen with all that past, experiences I will never have. Let's face it I was not an immigrant that had to prostitute herself to save her mother who was ill and so on. Now how to you get there? That's a pretty dark place to tap into. Drove on Santa Monica blvd a lot, watched prostitutes, harsh reality. Spend all my time thinking about her, the way she eats, the way she thinks, the way she moves, the way she stares. Constantly wrote things down about her,  fictional, but  made sense to me, for example in my head she had two bedrooms, one she slept in and one she fucked and once she was done she said "you can show yourself out when you wake up"... Rania was everywhere, in my head and one night I went to Bar Marmont, was letting her go, thought I need to have a moment in my head, a Nansia moment...was having such an amazing time with friends, laughing , vibrating...on my way to the restroom while I was walking through that little dark hallway, I was touching the wall  with my fingertips and Amy Winehouse's song  "I am no good" came on, I looked up and my whole body language changed, I got her, she fall right into place. I was done with Bar Marmont for the evening, went home bought the song on iTunes and the rest is on screen...