A Growing Up Story
Accidentals is a short film inspired by a true story of a former child prodigy whose life is turned upside down when his hero--his dad loses his health causing the boy to lose sight of who he wants to be, turning as a young adult to drugs and living on the streets. It's a personal exploration of the struggles of growing up, losing one's innocence and the iron bands of family. It also targets the complexities that make up the relationship between a father and son.
I was twelve-years-old when I started out as a street musician on the streets of San Francisco. It was around Thanksgiving time and three of my six siblings and I huddled together in coats and performed our Suzuki tunes and Christmas songs to the shoppers and tourists passing by. It was terrifying at first but then a bit exhilarating to receive applause or a response of any form. Our first day, to our surprise, we earned over eighty dollars. It felt surreal.
We didn't start the street performing just for the kick of it. We performed to help support our family through struggling times due to my dad's collapse of health from Parkinson's Disease and inability to work. We played for groceries, gas money, for the opportunity to buy presents during Christmas time. One of my proudest moments was when we saved enough money from our performing to replace our stolen video camera, enabling me to make little movies with my siblings.
My brother, Daniel was a child prodigy on the violin. The instrument sung under his fingertips. When he played, people were mesmorized. Almost immediately he was playing on his own street corner, on the way to pursuing the violin as a career.
Accidentals explores the struggles of growing up and coming into your own identity. As children we have our parents as role models whom we view in an idealized, manipulated light but with the passing of time and maturity the shroud falls and we discover they aren't these all knowing, perfect, invincible beings. For our hero, seeing his dad fall from his pedestal into such a weak, vulnerable state shakes him in a permanent way. Dad had been his personal hero, shining knight and who he aspired to impress and replicate but when he falls sick and lacks the strength to be present, supportive and the leader he once was, our boy breaks off on his own quest of wandering the streets of San Francisco with nothing but his violin. Music is the voice of this short film and the Boy himself as he grapples with the journey of becoming a man and discovering and loving his identity.
I find music to be such a powerful medium of communication; it's a universal language and can be an entrance into the musician's soul. It reveals beauty, pain, tears, anguish, anger, longing. I wrote Accidentals because someone I loved was lost and in so much pain which in turn pained me. I wanted to understand what was going on inside his heart. Music bound us together, so I wanted to tell a story that spoke through music and visuals in my favorite city, where it all started, San Francisco.
-Madeleine