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somewhere over the rainbow (and other stories)

  Exactly two years ago I found myself flying through a corner of a rainbow, and landed in Oaxaca, Mexico. It was the last film festival I traveled to, a brutal and sweet experience in the harshest of realities, trying to wrap my arms around the slipperiest industry and failing magnificently. Surrounded by fresh faces and eager eyes I ran from the rooms and into the street time and again, wandering off with the camera in my bag as a companion. I took pictures of a blind man that sang on the same corner every day, of wedding parades, of an old woman waiting to see the dentist.  Literally somewhere over the rainbow, I met the ugliest answers to questions I had been dragging my feet towards for years. Cramming the most delicious food into my mouth, joking at the nightly rooftop cocktail parties, grinning like the Cheshire Cat it was all coming to an end. Actually, it had ended before it even started though - and on the plane back to New York and finally Moscow the bone-crunching ...

WHALE (crying into the dark)


I have a recurring image of myself sitting in the darkened theater, as the last few shots of Whale unfold and my face is streaked with tears. It is an overwrought, operatic version of myself. I see my chin tremble, fighting it all back, trying to wrap my arms around the years that it took to get here, the heartache and devastation that sparked this story, the unflinching love that brought it into being. I have a feeling I will just be smiling like a Cheshire cat instead, hiding a low chuckle as E wanders through Eden's ugly world with her red blanket, while that jagged music I wrote plays, as helicopters blot out the sky.

Today is the day, and that is all that matters. E is halfway across the world on a beach, laughing with new friends, a complicated young woman but at the same time that curious, plucky little girl that will greet this audience on that screen.

Maybe all films are just crying into a dark room.


WHALE Trailer 1 from Marco North on Vimeo.





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