The event was consisted of four shorts directed by Argentina filmmaker Eduard “Teddy” Williams including Could See Puma, I forgot!,, and Persí. As I started watching the first and second piece, I found myself constantly looking for a narrative of the film by picking up visual clues such as locations, behaviors, and dialogues between characters. That’s where I got really frustrated since I could not get any idea of what I was watching. What’s the storyline here? What’s the meanings of this image and intentions of the filmmaker? The films rather became more ambiguous and poetic. I kept wondering and realized that his films focus on the ordinal moments in our lives documented in unique ways.

I saw lots of abrupt cuts, unique angles and replacements of cameras, and less explanations. All the films focus on young males and how they interact with each other. The shared theme among the three pieces seemed to be nature, plants, and fruits such as boys hanging out in abandoned buildings, cave, and around their houses. The locations of the shoots are different for each film including Argentina, France, and Vietnam. However, the director did not use conventional texts indicating time and location or personalize characters. It actually depersonalizes the image and characters. I started to realize there are more similarities than differences among people all over the world. Third piece was very interesting and experiments with the boundaries of repetitions where sounds get extremely overwhelmed. All of the sounds are juxtaposed two sentences starting “Seems like A is B” and last throughout the entire film. Moreover, image the filmmaker chosen to go along with the sentences are footage taken from 360 degree GoPro attached to roller skaters and men dressed as women cruising a town with their car. Again, no explanations to those characters at all and the image seem to be pretty much observational.

Fortunately, after the films, we had the filmmaker himself coming up to the stage for a discussion. This is usually a time for me to problem-solve because I can have better understanding of the meanings, intentions, and methods of the filmmaking explained by the filmmaker himself/herself. I bet many of the audience had a plenty of questions to ask as we are usually used to be given sufficient information about story and characters. I would say it was the most interesting discussion ever. What I basically understood from Teddy talking about his films was that he follows his intuitive artistic creativity and always experiments with how he shoots and shows the image. I didn’t quite get the answers to my questions! I headed to my home feeling like having an unsolved mystery in my mind. I kept thinking about what I saw until the next day, and I came to a realization that, that is what experimental filmmaking is. Shooting with a camcorder on a tripod does not always have to be the way to shoot. The filmmaker’s work is significant as he always challenges the normative of filmmaking and storytelling. I was inspired to explore, find, and sophisticate with my style.