Film Courage: In the four years you were making AFTER WE LEAVE movie how are you balancing your life? You are a
professor at Occidental College here in Los Angeles or Eagle Rock and you have a
family, you have children how are you balancing all that? Aleem Hossain, filmmaker and AR/VR creator, assistant professor in media arts and culture at Occidental College: The truth
is I think that that balance is never perfect I often joke that what I think
doesn't get talked about enough is that the stage of life loose that I'm in
right now is I don't know that I do anything as well as I wish that I could
but I'm just trying to get all of it to at least be pretty good being a dad
being a professor being a husband being a filmmaker
they all have their demands every one of them is awesome I wouldn't give up any
of them but know for sure making this movie is one of the most difficult
things ever done and I don't say that actually looking for pity but more like
I think they just should be a more candid acknowledgement of how hard it is
to balance those things you know for part of this movie I was like I was a
part-time professor part-time stay-at-home dad and trying to make a
feature and then you know now I'm a full professor at full-time professor at
Occidental and you know I have two kids now instead of one when I started and
for sure yeah like that balance is difficult in so many ways in terms of
just time when can you get free to do it in terms of just resources you know
those other things there's just spending money and that sort of stuff and then
we're generally the the hardest one I find is the shift in mindset that if I
were to really encapsulate the phase of life I'm in right now it's having to
shift gears and sort of take off different hats and put different hats on
with no real transition points so to go from dad to Professor to filmmaker
it's a dad you know around that there's no mental space to sort of flip over and
I'm just accepted I think I just worry it where I am right now and I think
there's this image of like filmmaking that is almost like it's divorced from
the rest of life but again you know I think that this is the reality of
independent cinema and every filmmaker I know knows this I actually we should
talk about it more which is to say if you were feeling like man it's really
hard to like you know pack that lunch for the kid and then they go to your job
and Mikey's like teach this lesson correctly and then make it to set on
time and shoot the shot having remembered everything you
needed and being in a state of mind to be creative you feel like that's
difficult I want to say like yeah it is difficult and I don't know who we're
kidding if we're saying it's not and and and to me like and that's fine like I
think that like that struggle is a reality and so I'm just trying to
maximize it and optimize it but I don't think it's gonna go hey yeah I see too
much of this mindset of like I got this and I can talk you know I know this
doesn't you know and I wish sometimes people were more transparent with no
this is really tough and yeah I don't know if I do have it but I'm still gonna
show up and I think it's important to acknowledge that again because I think
it it it's an the amount of time you can devote to filmmaking
I do think becomes a representation of an amount of privilege that you have and
I think it is important for us to recognize by the way that it is actually
harder for different people to get that half a day to even shoot a scene that
I'm talking you know that I'm talking about or you get an hour to do that and
that big societal things like that are part of the reason for the
representation gap in behind the camera and in front of the camera and that
that's why it's hard to address these things you know that it can't just be
all open up our application process or open up our you know how receptive we
are at other ideas that's awesome but you can have removed a lot of barriers
to entry and still larger sort of structural problems in like society can
be altering who even tries to step through those doors that's a really good
point I think that relates to interning as well even though you know there's a
lot of backlash about interns they hire industry is I think built on this idea
of well we have all these dreamers and the ones are the most passionate they'll
come and put in the time and I have to be honestly again I don't say this to
have any judgment against any individual who says that but I think it's
reflective of a structural bias that if you have a system where the measure of
like whether someone is deserving is they prove it to you about how much time
they put in that is equivalent to saying your system is structurally biased
against people who at who for who time is a greater resource a harder to find
resource and that's gonna be women people of color people of lower income
and so we have to be careful about I think it is always
important to judge passion and to see who's serious about what they want to do
but measuring that through certain metrics will be abused in the past I do
think contributes to the homogeneity of the industry single moms single dads
exactly and even if they do have time are they gonna be so tired exactly that
they can't finish it yeah I think that's one thing that you don't think about
when you're younger is oh yeah I can totally do this like as balance all the
stuff you don't realize how tired you're going to be and and you can't think
clearly you know and I think that's some yeah anyway that's another video
you