changes

Last night I watched the film Tsotsi, the South African film that won the Oscar for best foreign film this year. This was truly some great filmmaking, and the acting was superb. Above all, the story was a true hero’s journey, or else an antihero’s journey, because when you first meet Tsotsi, you do not like this guy. He is a gangster (the word Tsotsi apparently means Thug in Afrikaans). He is full of hate and lacks all decency, killing old men and shooting women for money. Yet as the story unfolds, he becomes a likeable character. You are on his side. Things happen to him that make him remember the child he was before he became a street survivor, and ultimately change into a decent man. In addition to the story itself, the cinematography was beautiful, especially the lighting.

I was talking to my friend Jessica yesterday about a dance film we’d like to create. As a theme, it’s going to be about identity, and the idea is how does your identity change according to external factors in your life. This has been something that I’ve always written about in my journal. I’ve often wrote about “who am I” according to where I was at that point in my life. For example, now I am Kristin, 35 going on 36, single, living with my mother in West Marin, a TV editor by profession, with a lover in Cuba. A year ago, I was living in Los Angeles in my hip and cool Silver Lake apartment. But I was unhappy. Here I feel happier, even though I’ve sacrificed some of my independence. Anyway, the theme of change and changelessness comes into play here as well. As much as we change throughout our lives, there are things that never change. People may always see me as the same spirited, high-energy, some may say crazy, gutsy girl. But M. says he remembers me from high school more as a shy and quiet girl. That was before he really knew me! Or that was before I really knew myself! I digress. The point is that external influences cause us to exhibit some characteristics above others at any given time and place. But who we are as a person, as a human being, no matter what the context, will always be the same. No one and nothing can change that. So we’re going to try to show this through dance and film, movement and moving picture, by repeating a phrase of choreography in several settings with different costumes and perhaps different music, and also allowing for the setting to inspire improvisation. I think it’s a very interesting concept, and I’m excited to embark on this creative endeavor.