I am an independent writer/director based in Brooklyn, NY. I've recently completed my Master's Degree in Film Production at the University of Texas at Austin.
In my work, I’m primarily motivated by feeling, the way a mantra is just a song that is sung for its sound, rather than for its meaning. I’ve found that films are a potent way of preserving feelings, and putting language to them. In this way filmmaking can be seen as a kind of alchemy, a translation. My singular goal with my films is to help others find language for complicated feelings, to look up at the screen and say “Ah yes, that’s what that is. I feel that too.” Film is a powerful antagonist to loneliness, the privacy and darkness of a theater affords a safe environment for expression, to reach out to someone and say your joy or your pain is not just your own, it is a part of some larger, indefinable, and all around you - you are not alone. Film has done that for me, and I hope to do that for others.
For as long as I can remember filmmaking has been the passionate language with which I have best expressed myself. I have taken this passion with me to many places. Places where I acquired a vast array of skills and experiences that enable me to contribute meaningfully to filmmaking in a variety of positions. I’ve worked for production companies, political campaigns, college classrooms, movie theaters, on a farm, in a hair salon and a retail kitchen - whatever I can do to keep supporting my work and ambitions.
I’ve often said that if I could sing, creative expression might be a tad bit simpler. But I love movies. Filmmaking is a both a pragmatic enterprise and a spiritual art; the negotiation between those two things is, to me, the beautiful game. If I could make an audience feel the way I feel when I watch movies, with that special kind of reverence and awe we reserve for shooting stars, that would make me happy.