filmmaker’s statement

My identity and style as a filmmaker is evolving over time and experience. As a Jewish, queer, white and Mexican midwesterner, I’ve always gravitated towards culturally, spiritually, and historically nuanced storytelling. I strive to engage film as a medium to more deeply explore a diasporic and anti-assimilationist lens. 

 Filmmaking to me is an immersive, sensorial experience that helps to locate stories and memory inherent to faces, gestures, breath, speech, movement, energy, absence, presence, and so on. My job is merely to navigate when to show up, what to frame, how to relate, listen and ask, sequence and build. 

Above all, it is collaboration and storytelling that initially pulled me to film. They provide a vital source of strength and connection between myself and all other participants, whether in front of or behind the camera. I place tremendous value on my relationships with collaborators — communication, trust, and laughter (the ability to “kick it”) are very important to me and to the success of my work. 

I’m aware that while film has the potential to heal, it too has the power to harm. I am committed to a lifelong journey of minimizing the extractive and intrusive tendencies of filmmaking — through integration, care, right relationship, and, when appropriate, cultural advising. In this evolving practice, I study those seasoned in healing-centric and ethical cross-cultural filmmaking. I find teachers in directors such as Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Verena Paravel. I began my own process of healing-centered filmmaking through my short film “Lava” when I collaborated with Wellness Consultant Eniola Kolawole. You can read more about the process of making “Lava” here. 

CONTACT
amirarosestone@gmail.com