"Not Broken"

A few weeks ago, an email appeared in my inbox: it was a friend and former classmate from Stanford, who along with two other students had been invited to participate in the Creative Activist Network's Bay Area Film Challenge, a five-day competition in which seven experienced student filmmaking teams from around the Bay Area would embark on the project of filming, editing, and crafting a five-minute documentary. The film challenge was sponsored by Participant Media, among other entities, and encouraged its teams to tell stories of creativity and progress, for the greater social good.

When this friend (herself a media/film studies and English major at Stanford) asked me if I was willing to be the subject of their documentary, I felt very flattered. And, once again, hey, why not? My own time commitment was minimal - sitting down for an interview, allowing the film crew to shadow me around the barn for riding practice, showing them around my apartment, helping put them in touch with other people who knew me for purposes of more video footage. Certainly it was nothing compared to the adrenaline-rush experience of running around scheduling interviews with people and somehow trying to get a coherent, high-quality documentary edited and subtitled and churned out within five days! The exciting part was that, when the film reached its final stages and ran past the judging panel, it took overall first place in the CAN Bay Area Film Challenge. That I never expected! I just saw the finished product for the first time today and very much enjoyed it:

So, props to "Team Tomorrowland" (Alex Simon, Carol Tan, and Stephanie DePaula) for such a lovely and well-accomplished filming and editing effort! I've also got to thank the friends, coaches, interpreters, and other Stanford people who agreed to help with or be interviewed for this project. And of course, many pats and carrots need to go to my mare Scarlett for being photogenic (film-o-genic?) and making me look good. Not entirely sure what I ever did to warrant such attention, but it's fun to watch such a nice video!