Back in 2002, I was blogging before the practice had hit mainstream. I was studying abroad in several European countries, and I had begun sending out long-winded emails (which I began calling my “travelogues”) full of descriptions of the places and the people I encountered to my friends and family and people I met along the way.

As a young Southern woman on her own for the first time, I approached the world with a great sense of curiosity and my journals were imbued with a both a sense of humor and whimsy. For instance, the titles of two such entries, one from Poland and one from France, respectively, were titled, “Break Dancing for the Pope” and “Frog Eaters and Freedom Fries.”

Before long, these emails were being forwarded to people I had never met, who would then send their comments and thoughts back to me. It was strange and also satisfying to hear how these strangers responded to my many (mis)adventures as I discovered my sense of independence. Eventually, I signed up for a (now defunct) Diaryland.com site, where my online diary took on more readers.

When my travels ended, however, so did these missives. Once the majority of people in my life were no longer characters just passing through, it was hard to write so light-heartedly about their personality strengths and flaws in so public a manner. And the daily tasks, which had often been the source of a funny cultural faux-pas or encounter (such as buying stamps in a Polish post office) no longer existed. I stopped carrying my little notebooks to jot down funny, overheard conversations or to record my latest thoughts on 17th century architecture. And, despite some encouragement to re-write these stories into a book, my journals remained untouched in the nether of my email accounts. (Thankfully, a dear friend compiled them all into three bound notebooks for me so there is an archive!)

Shortly thereafter, as I wrapped up my undergraduate degree, my interest in filmmaking began. I took my first video class, more on a lark than anything else. But in that first class, I had an awakening:  We watched films by Ross McElwee, Alan Berliner, and Agnes Varda. I had never seen anything like them. Not only were these films unlike any documentaries I had ever seen (my canon had, until that point, consisted mostly of  a collection of Nature episodes on PBS or agit-prop style docs about social issues), but they were drawing upon their own lives, and, in Varda’s case, travels and experiences, to tell stories and pose questions in an essay of sound and image. These films thrilled and inspired me and left me with haunting thoughts, images, and, most significantly, questions about what I had seen and what it all meant.

And so, in that very first class, with the most raw and rudimentary of skills and tools, I set out and made a short film about my grandmother.  Looking back at that 7-minute piece, I shrink with embarrassment. The craft is abominable and the tone trite and self-indulgent. But in that film was the seed for the one I would complete six years later, having finished film school and begun teaching video production as a college professor.

I like to think that this new film is closer in craft and quality to the films that first inspired me so. In any case, it’s a far cry from that first attempt years ago.
It seems I’ve traded my early travelogues for a more labored kind that allow me to use material from my own proverbial backyard in way that doesn’t seem to mock or exploit the people and places I can’t ever really leave behind (i.e. my family and my hometown). Instead, it seems this new form even allows me to celebrate those roots, both the heartwarming traditions and the less flattering truths, that make my stories layered enough (in my opinion, at least) to grace the silver screen for all to see.

Now that this first film is finished, I am once again feeling that call to create, to write. And I wonder what form it should be–another film? fiction or non? short or feature? Or is it maybe time to start over again with a plane ticket, pencil, and notebook?