Artist's Statement
The hardest part of this assignment was choosing what part of the interview to use - with a time limit of 3 minutes, it would be hard to include all of the depth and richness of the conversation. As such, we decided to focus on his personal story - not only does this reinforce the idea of empathy, it places the viewer in a specific context and mood and offers something of a complete narrative, and hopefully prompts the viewer to continue the thought process themselves.
We wanted specifically to interview an individual that had a definite contrarian viewpoint, whose experiences would help diagnose the society in which they lived - Kendall is not only a minority within a minority, he is an entrenched "other" and has a clear understanding of Mormon culture in spite of this. We feel that his perspective is invaluable and can prompt necessary and edifying dialogue. Through speaking with him, we were able to enter a conversation that we would have neglected otherwise, and that provided us a chance to forgo pity and sympathy and practice empathy in a real and meaningful way.
We chose to make this largely a talking-heads documentary as the theme is dialogue, and we wanted to reinforce that. We inserted shots of his belongings and apartment in order to visually convey a sense of personality and meaning. Jake conducted the interview and operated the camera and microphone, and Daniel edited it.
