March Updates (+ full video audio)

Hi everyone!

I hope you're all well. I've made a real effort to make time to work on the video this last few weeks. Progress is still slow because of how little free time I have in general, but I've finally finished editing the audio and moved onto the actual video. As it's been a long wait, I've attached the complete audio (sans music) for anybody who'd like to listen to it now!

I've also posted my complete piece for Ipse Facto, a Phoenix Wright zine I took part in last year. You can preorder for the final round of sales here! It's a pretty stunning book.

Otherwise, I've been on a poetry kick and am currently reading all of Savannah Brown's collections, starting with Graffiti. I found it very weak, but don't want to be too harsh as it was her first collection and she was a teenager when she wrote most of it -- though I think other pieces not included in the collection that she wrote as a teenager were actually very strong. Her writing has evolved a lot since so I expect to have more positive things to say about her later collections.

Next, I watched the Netflix docuseries MH370: The Plane That Disappeared. I was admittedly looking for something kind of trashy to watch but considering the quality of some of Netflix's other docuseries, I was surprised just how poor this one was. The evidence is poorly-presented and explained, it isn't a comprehensive overview of the facts, and prizes entertainment factor over all else, favouring some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories to present over diving properly into those more likely to be true. Disappointing for such a compelling mystery.

The docuseries did get me into, for lack of a better term, a 'plane crash mood', which next led me to the Spanish-produced Society of the Snow, an adaptation of the book of the same name documenting one of the most famous plane crashes and ensuing survival stories of all time -- that of a Uruguayan rugby team who crashed in the Andes on their way to a match in Chile. Against all odds, seventeen of the survivors of the crash survived for months in the freezing temperatures before they were finally rescued. The story is partially famous for the fact that the survivors had to resort to eating the bodies of the deceased to avoid starving to death.

I watched this film a few weeks ago now and have not stopped thinking about it since -- it became an instant favourite. I had heard of the story prior but didn't know much about it -- J.A. Bayona's adaptation of Pablo Vierci's comprehensive account, which draws from each of the survivor's testimonies, is visceral, gripping, and beautifully human. The performances, cinematography and score are all understated yet come together to deliver a story that grips you and doesn't let go. This so easily could've been a sensationalised account of an almost incomprehensible series of horrors, and is instead resoundingly tender, above all a tribute to those who didn't make it out of the mountains, but also a truly moving story of the brotherhood forged between the survivors, all the acts of humanity that saved them. The film is a creative and personal inspiration and the story an incredibly hopeful one. It's also one of the greatest testaments to the power of fiction I've seen -- from their own mouths, a means for the survivors and families of the deceased alike to process and heal. I'm absolutely obsessed and have been telling everyone to watch it!! Do that, and then watch all the interviews with the cast and director.

That's all for now. Speak soon!