La vida tuya, mía y de ellos
Back in March 2022 I was approached by Ariana Franco, a student of The New School in New York, who was about to finish her bachelors in film and as requisite of graduation had to make a thesis film. She had written a short film that was meant to be set back in Puerto Rico and was looking for a crew, thats where I came in.
After reading one Ariana’s drafts I signed up to the project as Director of Photography and Associate Producer. I gathered a small crew of friends and with the help of Visual Mixtape we gathered all the equipment necessary and went off to shoot the film.
The film follows a writer who is unable to write a short story by midnight. During the process, the protagonist finds three negatives that inspire him to begin writing his short story, but by the time he finds the third negative, the protagonist realizes that the creative process has devoured him entirely and that in the most profound sense he has surrendered himself to the craft and his short story.
With my film, I wanted to examine the relationship between the artist and his craft; and explore the limits of fiction and reality; reason and madness; art and life. I feel as though the creative process that leads an artist to create is precisely what reveals his greatness. The film portrays a Puerto Rican writer struggling to become the artist that he can be despite the limitations of his circumstances. Surrounded by stories but overwhelmed by his inability to begin writing, he comes to realize that there is no escape to the pain and joy that shapes the path of a writer and an artist.
-Ariana Franco
Part of what really attracted me to the project was the experimental aspect that came attached with it, something that took me out of my comfort zone. What could we do in camera to achieve the feeling we were going for. And with having black and white segments I really wanted to try and copy what films like Tri-x 400 look like. I feel like we threw caution to the wind and really went for it giving it our all.
— Juan Aramburu
