Being stuck in a rut is never a good place to be in. The trickiest thing about it is it can happen in an instant or gradually, over a long period of time or in tiny episodes, as one big storm or numerous rain showers. It comes in feeling stuck and afraid, in self-doubts, and broken spirits. It brings us down, yes, but it is also an opportunity to rise up and prove to yourself that you can do better.
And as cliché as it may seem, it is from his time spent feeling stuck in a rut that Whammy Alcazaren found the courage to do something he loves again: filmmaking. In the latest installment of Globe’s PORTRAITS series, we discover all this and more straight from Whammy himself.
Disappointed with his film Islands, he found himself demotivated. Thus, for five years he moved away from directing and resigned himself to working as a production designer for films and advertising projects. While his career did flourish during that time, he constantly found himself overwhelmed with the desire to create and have fun with the medium of cinema, something that he had always been in love with.
It’s only fitting, then, that his big move towards going back to the grind was creating Never Tear Us Apart, and he kicked it off by choosing an unconventional, but not far-fetched, tool to do so—an iPhone X. When asked why he opted for this tool he shared that, “The visual medium is expanding to involve the currently-developing visual language exercised through social media. We are practicing a new form of storytelling that is organic and curated, deliberately intrusive but personal. From the theaters to our laptops and now to our phones, we are watching and enjoying this modern kind of cinema.”
Photos by Karen De La Fuente
Never Tear Us Apart was testament to this. And if there’s anything he learned and took to heart whenever he looked back to his days creating Islands, it’s embracing his renewed spirit of fun. If Islands was the time he carried the heavy weight of societal obligation and peer pressure, Never Tear Us Apart was his big move away from that. “I wanted to laugh at all my pain and in its many faces and its many layers.”
He could go on and on about what finally pushed him to dive into creating Never Tear Us Apart, but ultimately it all boils down to his passion for filmmaking and the pressing question that all of us face—pursuing happiness. “You can make things happen if you choose to. Create for yourself the life you can be happy with. Make it count.” And in choosing to get out of a rut, Whammy Alcazaren made his big move.
Watch Whammy #MakeBigMoves in his episode of PORTRAITS.
