2017 | 12 m | United States | Written and Directed by Craig Nisperos
Date: Friday, December 1, 2023 | 7:00 PM
Venue: NYU King Juan Carlos Center | 53 Washington Sq S, NYC 10012
Free and open to the public.
RSVP Link: http://bit.ly/panawin2023f
Synopsis
“I can walk in the streets here and it’s easy to just dissolve into the crowd, to simply be an anonymous body finding for space in the pavement.” A young Filipino American man, feeling lost and discouraged in the big city, draws strength from the voice and sentiments of his immigrant mother.
Notes on the Film and the Director
Distance can almost be a sequel to this evening’s main feature, Colma: The Musical. Whereas the protagonists in Colma are yearning for the opportunities and excitement of the big city, the young man in Distance is already in the biggest of all US cities, New York. While Colma’s high school graduates can’t wait to leave home, the young artist of Distance feels homesick and isolated. The sentiments expressed in Distance have found resonance in almost 30 film festivals across the US and abroad, including those in the Philippines, Chile, and Turkey.
Nisperos was inspired to make the film after attending a screening of Filipino and Fil-Am shorts at the Philippine Consulate in New York. Distance acknowledges the old-fashioned values of Nisperos’ immigrant parents in the way mother and son write to each other about their deepest feelings through old-fashioned letters rather than email or text.
A second-generation Filipino American born in Seattle, he was always fascinated with the camera and became active as videographer of weddings and other events while pursuing graduate and post-graduate studies in bio-medical and information technologies. Footage from his camera has been featured in Joan’s Friends, a French documentary by Guy Bloch-Champort on the artist Joan Mitchell. At the Cannes Directors Fortnight, he served as videographer of the cast and crew of Lav Diaz’s Ang Hupa/The Halt and back in New York, shot the behind-the-scenes footage of Ida del Mundo’s Never Forget. He has participated at the Asian American International Film Festival as selection committee member and featured filmmaker. In the tri-state area and Washington, DC, he has become a sought-after videographer for top Fil-Am chefs who appreciate his exacting eye.
Despite the weariness and challenges that living in a big city like New York often brings on, Distance’s filmmaker and fictional character find common ground in the drive to continue struggling and partaking of its opportunities, with the fierce determination that many second gen Fil Ams would have picked up from their immigrant parents.
— Gil Quito, Curator
