Late Night Pasta!
My time in San Francisco has been such an exhilarating experience! The city has the kind of atmosphere that makes me feel that I have lived here my whole life. It is such an accepting, open, and kind community! Almost everyone I have encountered from San Francisco has been so kind and considerate of my self-expression and identity!
Along with the beauty of the city, there is the beauty of the films that we have been seeing! We are seeing such a wide variety of genres, lengths, and stories in these films. So far, a great deal of the films have been tugging at my heart strings, I will not lie. When coming to San Francisco for this immersion, I truly did not know what to expect out of these films. I kind of was in the mindset of, ‘Oh, I’m going to see so many funny and rom-com movies and it’s going to be a great time!’ when truly it has been so much exceptionally more than that. These films we are seeing are breaking down queer stereotypes and humanizing the queer experience.
One of the first films I saw that I felt connected to was In the Summers. It’s a film about two girls who go to visit their father during the summer. We see them in different stages of life, and there are large time cuts. The oldest sister is queer and the younger one is, assumingly, an ally. It starts with seeing the father clean and in recovery, thus he’s able to see his children again. As the film progressed, we watched him relapse, the children stopped visiting, and eventually there was reconciliation but not for at least 10 years later. What I really appreciated from this film is that it only speaks from the children’s perspective. We don’t see the father going through the different stages of growth, or even him failing or succeeding when he is on his own. We don’t see the girls at their mom’s house, only through the setting and relationship of their father. The way the director created such 3-dimensional characters made the movie feel real and easy for me to connect to.
Another film that tugged at my heart strings was a coming-of-age film called, Young Hearts. It was about a 12-year-old boy who was learning about his sexuality when another 12-year-old boy moved in across the neighborhood. There were a great deal of ups and downs between the boys, but overall, the movie was wholesome, pure, and full of that nostalgic young love. I appreciated that the director kept this movie lighthearted and enjoyable for all audiences.
The reason I bring up these two films, specifically, is because a lot of times queer stories are always seen as tragedies, and if they’re not tragedies then its oversexualized, which can be hard to relate to every experience. I felt with these films, they were much more personal and authentic stories. Being able to see the growth and reconciliation between the queer daughter and her father in In the Summers, was such a healing thing for myself. Seeing people experience a similar experience I had at one point in my life made me feel more normal in this world; that my queer story is not a tragedy, it’s simply apart of my journey in my life. With Young Hearts and seeing so much love and acceptance for the young boys and seeing them live in such bliss with one another felt like the director was holding my hand and giving me a big hug throughout the whole film, it was such a great and heartwarming experience.
Overall, with having such emotional movies to watch that have such great heart and story lines to it, coming home to an environment to debrief is essential. After these movies, a lot of times we would have deep conversations in our Ubers (sorry to the Uber drivers! Wishing you the best, and hope you enjoyed listening to our ramblings) and it felt nice to be able to connect with others over these films and share our personal connections. When we get home, people tend to be hungry so a quick easy thing to make was pasta, because who doesn’t like pasta?! For me, pasta is a favorite comfort food, so being able to eat delicious pasta, whether buttered noodles, tortellini, or even just pasta with a yummy sauce & chicken, made such a fulfilling experience: to have a homecooked meal with such kind, and caring people while cracking jokes, watching old music videos, or even some good old reality TV.
