florida and its discontents is an in-progress documentary project that includes 5 short films.
16mm, 8mm, video, field recordings, and designed sound. (2021-present).
each film explores a different aspect of the northern floridian landscape, where i spent my childhood summers. Across the films, aesthetic connections and narrative fragments point to gaps, dislocations, and opacities within my family archive, personal and collective memory, and the process of image making.
There are multiple starting points for this project. The smell of cypress wood and the winding corridors and hidden rooms of my grandparent’s house. The heroin overdose of my half-sister in an interstate motel. A letter my father wrote from army training camp in 1969. My grandfather’s office—his typewriter, piano, rolodex and books. A poem he wrote about hunting as the American dream. The black water cypress swamps and hot springs I visited as a kid. Vacations in St. Augustine’s castillo de san marcos, an ever present edifice of colonialism. And, beside that fort, screaming peacocks and the Fountain of Youth. The sound of fighter jets flying overhead from the airbase. My grandmother’s maternity shop “Violet.” A bird’s nest bar with a panoramic 360 view of the ocean. Horse burials on the land. A ghostly photograph of my grandmother’s childhood home. 8mm family films that document New Year’s Eve in the Florida Keys, Easter, Christmas, scuba diving and trips to the lake. Above all else, the strong presence of a material and media culture within which memories hide.
films:
florida i: this house is made of cypress.
florida ii: looking through windows.
florida iii: the missing woman.
florida iv: the quest for the fountain of youth.
florida v: juniper springs.
florida II: looking through windows. 8mm transferred to video + video. sound. work in progress. life in florida between 1950-1965.