We can definitely mark “Movie Maker” off the list of possible career choices! This experience was insane to say the least. I have never worked so hard on a project in my life.. hands down. I honestly don’t know where to begin. I’ll start with the group of people I worked with.

Macaulay is filled with creative and talented people, and I was lucky enough with not only to work with a group of ladies who were both creative and talented, but also cooperative, thoughtful, and hard working. I was the cinematographer of the group, but all of the other roles were shared and brainstormed together to make the best possible outcome that we can make. We were all very open minded when hearing each others thoughts and ideas (and we definitely had plenty) and tried to make each idea work somehow into the film. I appreciated my group, and working with them was probably my favorite part of the film process.

All the other parts of the film process, was very… ugh. It was hard. We filmed everything in one day, with plenty of time to edit and discuss the film afterwards. Holding my camera for 9 hours straight trying to capture the moment in the best lights and angles possible was so hard, and I appreciate how my group didn’t just leave me to “handle it”, they helped and made helpful suggestions that made things a lot easier for me. My arms and back muscles felt quite sore the next day, but looking at the footage and editing it with the help of my group made it definitely worth it. Editing it was probably the hardest part of the whole process, because after doing a supposedly good job editing the “east village podwalk” I was held at high expectations and I had a big desire to meet those expectations for both myself and for my group.

I felt like the reason I didn’t “enjoy myself” making this film was because I did not connect to the script. I thought it was so weird to be honest, but to each their own. It was upsetting that after working so hard on a piece of work, I couldn’t even show my parents my group and my accomplishment due to the disgusting dialogue from Spider and the amount of cursing that went on. I felt like it wasn’t really meaningful, and once its all over, I will probably not look back at this piece of work.

With that being said, I’m still very proud of the work my group and I created. We worked really hard, just like I’m sure all of our peers in the class did, and looking at it, I can safely say that we really did the best we could. Take after take, we continued and didn’t give up, no matter how many times we burst out laughing, or someone forgot their lines, or I forgot to hit record on my camera. With no judgement, we kept marching on, and now our march has finally reached its final destination!

What a life changing experience this class was. I promise I’m not just saying that– my life was literally changed. As I mentioned in my last blog, I did not expect to have to watch, read, and experience what I have these last few months in my first semester of college. I did not expect to have the ability to write so informally in a blog (what a long way I’ve come), and nowadays I’m constantly looking around for a good picture to snap, even though the photo journal has come to an end. Mostly through the films and the shows that I’ve attended due to this class, my view of New York City has totally changed. Through Taxi Driver, I learned of how huge of a change New York City has gone through, something I had no clue had happened before. Through Wall Street I was shown how Wall Street can change people and even how different Wall Street is from any other place in the world. Through Do the Right Thing, I saw the continuous struggle of police brutality, which is still very evident in today’s society—I guess some things just never change. But what my favorite work was Birds with Sky Mirrors. It was my favorite because I never thought I could hate something so much. How does that make sense? It’ll all make sense in a second. My life experiences made my reaction the way it was. Just like in my first blog, I wrote about how Art is an Experience, and how every person views art in a unique way because each person has unique experiences. Without the experiences that I’ve went through, I may still have hated Birds with Sky Mirrors, but I probably wouldn’t be writing about how it was my “favorite”.

So watching Birds with Sky Mirrors, I had many thoughts and emotions going through my mind. I started off annoyed at the horrible choice of music, I went through a phase of hysteria when the naked women started screaming (I had to hold Elizabeth very tightly in order for the woman giving out the programs not to yell at me for cracking up) and then I was very pensive the rest of the performance. Why was G-d putting me through this? As the seconds ticked on my watch, I was growing more and more annoyed and soon enough I believed I was going through a form of torture. My experiences made me believe that every situation I’m in, I’m in for a reason, and I sat there thinking what the reason for this situation was. Did I do something horribly wrong that I needed to atone for a sin? Maybe. That was the thought for a while, and I sat there for a few minutes thinking about all the things I’ve done wrong in my life. But then I looked at all of the performers and thought to myself: New York City would have a performance like this.

I realized that all of the people around me, myself included, were in this City and were living and breathing away the days of our lives, trying to become someone… something. I don’t really live dangerously; I go to school in hopes of being a Speech Pathologist one day. My friends on either side of me are in school to become something else. Who knows where half of us will end up? But what I did know at that moment was that those performers were up there and New York City gave them the opportunity to be there. New York City gave them the chance to make this a “work of art”. Yea, I may totally and completely not understand why anyone would even pay a dime or spend their precious time here on this Earth to watch this performance, let alone perform in it, but what I do or don’t understand really doesn’t change much, and as much as I hated this performance, it really did have an impact on me, whether I like it or not. What I watched when I saw Birds with Sky Mirrors may not have been a version of my “truth”, but the fact that it even exists and is considered a work of art screams New York City to me. New York City is the only place I know that encourages and supports such “crazy” things! But although its crazy to me, I know that its also the place that encourages and supports the things that are important to me and that’s all that I really need. Birds with Sky Mirrors made me see New York City for what it really is: the city of opportunities (no matter how weird or boring those opportunity may be!).

Back in high school, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Not just any lawyer however, but a big corporate one, where the people you work for basically own your entire life, but give you a quarter of a million dollars in return every year. I interned at a law firm and my employer said, “why are you here? Why do you want to be a lawyer, for the money?” and I said “Yep.” (Needless to say I was a silly little girl, and I have grown since then, but lets continue with my story). My employer then told me something that I will probably never forget: “If you do something that you love and that you’re good at, then the money will come.” This idea was astonishing for me. Money became something that was more of a reward for a job well done, rather than an outcome of being a slave. She opened my eyes and made me realize that you don’t have to be a slave to money, and that money will come by itself if a person is deserving of it. This concept can be applied to most careers, and I think it greatly applies to artists.

Artists often spend so much time and effort on their work, and many of them not only attempt to express their own feelings into their work, but touch the feelings of others with their art as well. I not only believe that artists can produce commercially successful work that also has important social or political value, but I think that when they do incorporate social and political issues into their work, it is what draws attention to it and makes it a success. All of the films we’ve watched through out the semester touched on either social class, race, or other social issues that exist in New York City. A film such as Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, talks about the “scum and filth” that roamed the city, and gives harsh opinions on topics such as prostitution, racism, politics, and many of the other issues that surrounded New York City during that time period. The film was totally and completely about social and political issues, and was also considered one of Scorsese’s best films.

With that being said, there are also artists who produce commercially successful work… just to make them commercially successful. Some people call it “selling out”, I call it making a living. Yea, I bet a lot of these “commercially successful” pieces of work may not be exactly meaningful or touching, but hundreds and thousands of people like it so why not produce it? I find myself not listening to a lot of commercially successful work that has no social or political value, because I often don’t see the point of it, but if other people like it, which they definitely do, then who am I to be against it. The artists make money, and some people enjoy it. Sounds like a win-win to me. Making it big in this industry is hard, and these artists are people too. If they do what they love and are good at it, then maybe the money will come to them on its own. But we live in reality, and growing up I realized that although what my employer said was very nice, it might not always be the truth.

Boy, is college not what I expected it to be. Actually, it is for the most part, there was just one class that totally threw me off guard. I don’t think anyone really has to guess what class that is. Some of the movies I’ve watched for Arts of NYC I would probably never watch on my own, nor would I ever want to watch again. But just because I would never want to watch some of these films again, doesn’t mean that they didn’t knock my socks off. One of the movies that really blew me away was Taxi Driver. It was probably the most grim and dark movie about New York City that I’ve ever seen, and definitely was the film that traumatized me the most. Let me explain.

For a long time, I thought I was pretty good at history. I knew how New York City started and even all of the American presidents in order. Taxi Driver really showed me however, that I barely knew the things that actually mattered about the city that I’ve lived in my entire life. I had no idea that the New York City I know now was so different just a few decades earlier. I really was in total and utter shock when Scorsese’s film showed a New York City that was completely different than how I knew it: prostitutes, gangs, drugs, and movie theaters that showed X Rated films (yes this was what traumatized me the most! What has been seen… cannot be unseen). WHAT? How in the world is this the same city that I live in? How was this the city my parents dreamed about when they were young college students in Uzbekistan? How would moving to a place like this give me a chance for a better life than they had? I was so shocked with what I was seeing. Where are the dressed up Elmo’s and Mickey Mouses standing around to take pictures with tourists? Where are the artists selling their work? Where is that excited city atmosphere? I’ll tell you where it wasn’t: IN THIS MOVIE.

Although I was really disgusted by multiple aspects of this film, I was full of joy when I finished watching it. A couple of my friends still had disgust etched on their faces at the start of the credits, but I was simply beaming. Why my strange reaction? Lets just say I was beyond grateful that I never lived to witness such a life in such a gruesome atmosphere. I was thanking Gd that this film was based on New York City’s history, and not on its present. The Disney happy go lucky atmosphere of New York City today? That’s PERFECT for me.