Personal Manifesto

by Jaime Grijalba.

Will this be it? The definitive? The last one? The post that will shatter the expectations and destroy the ‘reputation’ I’ve been building online? Saying that ‘Donnie Darko’ (2001) was my favorite film of all time didn’t do it, neither did the huge blank spots in my film watching, nor the addition of ‘trash’ in my Top 20 films of 2010. Some people may know, but I think the majority of you don’t, I am 21 years old, I live in Chile (a longish country in South America) and I go to the Catholic University of Chile, in which I study ‘Audiovisual Direction’, in other words, I study Film, but they don’t like that name around here. Supposedly, the career I study would let me direct film, TV, commercials, music videos, also produce, write, shoot, connect, etc. Practicly, they aim way too high for a 4-and-a-half years studying time. So, what I am going to do is show you a piece of my work, a short film directed and written by me.

This one is called “Manifiesto”, which in spanish means “Manifesto”, it was shot, edited and uploaded in 2010. It’s 3 minutes long (the maximum allowed for the exercise) and was made in the context of the Documentary Workshop lead by the teacher, journalist and filmmaker Paola Castillo. Why I am so unsure about showing you this? Well, many reasons, but first of all, she (Paola) hated it and gave me a failing grade. Now, in no way I’m trying to get my revenge on her or anything likely, I’m just putting all I have out there and hope for the best, at least a couple of nods, maybe some hate mail, a bunch of inflamatory comments, just good moments. So, here you have it, give it a watch.

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The Holo-Men: Bruce Wagner’s “Wild Palms”

There’s a perverse glee to be found whenever the world catches up to science-fiction. Sometimes it comes in the form of mankind matching the imagined potential of what was once the most seemingly impossible of technological achievements—setting foot on the moon, exploring the ocean depths, or stringing the world on so many wires of electronic communication. At other moments, we see our human race fall prey to all the very worst nightmares rumbling about in our collective unconsciousness—so many new innovations in terrible weaponry, dystopian states and corporate greed reigning supreme on all the distant horizons of our tomorrows. Most of the time, however, all we ever really see is the march of history walk past the imaginary watershed moments without so much as a passing glance, pushing all those possible achievements yet-to-come even deeper into the distance as we struggle to understand even the most basic and rudimentary forms of positive and negative scientific advancement. At times like those, we may even observe all those one-time far-off dates on the calendar grow closer and pass us by like former friends at a school reunion that barely even take the time to recognize anyone at all. 1984 has come and gone, and Orwell’s world of Big Brother has not yet come to pass (or at least has done so in a much more subtle fashion); 2001 happened ten years ago and we’re certainly no closer to colonizing the moon or exploring Jupiter; when 2019 reaches our temporal shores, I doubt we’ll even have to worry about Replicants or whether or not they dream of electric sheep.

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