Aya Jaffar — Poetics of Witnessing

In a film class, Peter Lucas, who taught with a mesmerizing mixture of imparting his gaze and creating space for us to cultivate our own, gave us this thought as we fearfully dipped our toes into the idea of making a short film: Any film is like the beads on a necklace held together with thread. You don't need a long narrative or well-thought out scenes. Just go out and respond to your feelings and thoughts with the camera on your phone. Put it together as an experiment and see what you get. This film is that. It’s a series of short clips taken throughout my daily life in both NYC and some clips of Tokyo taken earlier during the semester. Filmed and edited entirely on my iPhone5 (archaic and obselete devices today). The texts are a compilation from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities,and John Koeing’s Dictionary of Obsolete Sorrows, both of which I felt resonated with how I experience the longing, nostalgia, wonder, and sadness of life unfolding in front of me.