To be or not to be … a filmmaker?

Documentary Film Course Week 1

After couple of years spent at Saatchi’s working as strategist I recently decided to go back to university to pursue a PhD. As much as I liked my previous life and my work in advertising was fun and exciting I was constantly longing for something that would be at least a bit more meaningful and justified my presence in the world. So I returned to books and thinking and Writing, a slightly different from of writing than brief writing. Yet, the real reason why I returned was to be able to understand and tell story of people whose life and fate matter to me – the story of Palestinians living outside Palestine. Hence, I realized that as much as I want to do academic research, the film was perhaps much more comprehensive way of telling people’s stories. And more promising in terms of reaching to ‘normal people’ in ‘real world’ - outside academia and outside advertising. So here I am, taking the anthropological filmmaking course.

And I am scared. I am scared that as much as I want to do this, hiding behind piece of paper feels now so much more comfortable than actually doing it. Somehow I do not feel ready. And I feel naked having being given camera that does filming ‘for real’ (in opposition to how I used camera in all travelling and exploring research). I am scared that ‘my film’ will be the tough proof that the way I see world is too vague or just terribly banal.