Practice Space
Close friends Edwin and Steven, high school students, advise each other on dating and drama — based on zero experience — while seeking a space to hang after school.
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Filmmaker Statement

In Practice Space, close friends Edwin and Steven, high schoolers, advise each other on dating and drama — based on zero experience — while seeking a space to hang after school. I wrote the film specifically for the two leads — Alex Chavez and Yan Bo Lin. Alex and Yan Bo are two NYC kids, non-actors who I met in different circumstances—I tutored Alex for a year, while I met Yan Bo when I had a temp job selling mattresses at CostCo and his mother asked me to watch him for half an hour. These unexpected connections four years ago led to "Cramming," my 2020 short film which explored a fracture in the friendship of two middle school boys, played by Alex and Yan Bo, as fictionalized versions of themselves. They were 11 and 12, respectively, when we filmed the first short. Now, they are 15 and 16.   During the limbo of the writers’ and actors’ strikes, I approached Alex and Yan Bo about a new film. Yan Bo confessed that he has wanted to act since "Cramming" but hadn’t had the courage to pursue it. He showed me a script he'd written — a bizarre one-man play about Neil Armstrong — which I used as a prompt to write a story true to their voices. The resulting collaboration grew from conversations between the three of us — where they expressed their fears and boasts, hesitations and (misguided) certainties. We shot the film in two days on location in Washington Heights, spots that I grew up exploring as a kid with my oldest & closest friend, Kushal Patel. We're proud of this small story of male friendship; the challenges of vulnerability, empathy, and connection; risks and rewards.

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