Film log #5
This roll is really a love letter to the West Coast. It's from the end of the summer of 2024, and really captures the beauty and range of my home state. It's also a reminder that there are forces greater than humans in this world, and hopefully my annotations provide evidence of that.
Even growing up in the beautiful El Sereno hills & valleys, I didn't quite understand just how beautiful and revered my home state is. I've always maintained that I will live and die in California, but it's really sinking in just how much is left to explore.
Summer heat, friends and the big city. Scenes from San Francisco and Berkeley.
Selections from LA and Oakland, and some music out in San Francisco. Although the Bay is quite different than my home, it has so much to offer.
Can you believe these are all San Francisco? I couldn't. Even though I've been living in the Bay Area for years now, I had not experienced this side of San Francisco. It's been touched but not marred by humans—you can still feel the land moving through time with us. In contrast, the developed city seems divorced from the land: it's been decided by humans what portions are worth "maintaining." Here though, the land itself gets to determine what it will look like. All we can do is exist in it.
In the fall, I took a trip up north with friends that I met here in the city. We kept driving until we hit Oregon. All along, the trees keep going and going, with no end. This trip reminded me how much of this land is still unknown to me. I thought about how different the land must've been before colonization ripped it into the newly globalized world; how the land continues to shift and change with the tides of human activity; how we leave memories of ourselves. The trees know nothing of the hotel chains that were built alongside them, or what Airbnb is, but they can feel when humans come and go—leaving a wake.
The land and the trees will live on far after you and I. Although our world is rapidly headed towards ever-increasing destruction of life (a new holocaust, a deteriorating environment and an increasing police state), these beings were here before and know what the world used to be. Each one might have witnessed a different history that we cannot ever learn: who sat underneath it? How many people and buildings has it watched come and go? For some of these redwoods, how many empires have they lasted longer than? They stand as testament that life will resist the whims of humans—no one will never be able to fell all the trees.
