By Jeff Belza de Jesus
Seeking comfort after André Bazin’s funeral, Orson Welles (43) asks a Priest (25) to walk with him to his car. Welles’ distress worsens as the Priest is unable to satisfy Welles’ questions. Welles blasphemes against God and finds himself at the mercy of the screenplay’s author.
Editor-in-Chief
Jenna Woolley
Project Manager
Sophie Graham
Writers Statement:
How can my voice mean anything in the world?
As a film student, I’m frightened about my chances of success in a
competitive film industry. As a Filipino immigrant coming from a
colonized and imperialized nation, I’m frightened about losing
even more of my family’s culture; assimilation is the only path to
the economic success that my grandparents never enjoyed. As a
Filipino-American film student, I’m frightened that by relying on
the established conventions of an artistic medium so infused into
the history of Western globalization, my art will build on the
cultural heritage of oppressors.
The title “Control (Inspired by Kendrick Lamar)” is a refusal to
contribute to that heritage, preferring instead to build on the
heritage of the rappers and Asian YouTube singers that I admired
as a youth. As film is a primarily visual medium, the script often
relies more heavily on voices, dialogue, and intertextuality than
visual storytelling, more influenced by the conventions of hip-hop
and YouTube covers than The Birth of a Nation. Control is a
literary form that utilizes the conventions of cinema, as well as
the history it automatically connotes.
Whether performed by Ian McKellen or directed by Michael Avila,
the world remembers that Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot.
In cinema, however, authorship is debatable. If Control were
anything more than a script, my voice could easily dissipate into
a crowd of collaborators.
As a student in a predominantly white film school, it seems that
one of the few ways my voice can survive is to express myself
through white stories rather than Filipino-American ones. Hence
the use of Orson Welles as my surrogate in Control. My voice is
whitewashed, but on my own terms.
Leading Editor
Joseph Seamons
Supporting Editors
Meg Farnsworth
Gigi Knapp
Copyeditor
Fleur Van Woerkom
