Filmmaker Statement

It is a mysterious and enlightening journey, realizing that someone close to you is a victim of abuse. Even more mysterious and enlightening is the journey to understanding how you can help them— and more often— how you cannot help them. SPARKS LAMPINI portrays a pivotal moment in this hazy cycle of frustration and despair. Given that this project engages with the issue of domestic abuse, it is important to acknowledge some statistics about this specific type of violence in this country: -On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States — more than 12 million women and men over the course of a year. -50% of young people who experience rape or physical or sexual abuse will attempt to commit suicide. -Only 1/3 of the teens who were involved in an abusive relationship confided in someone about the violence. SPARKS LAMPINI intends to portray how the pain of abuse reverberates. It aims to investigate and observe the ways in which this pain is expressed by some and swallowed by others. The film hopes to dispel the tired, reductive image of domestic abuse as ‘wife-beating’, and reveal that such violence casts its great shadow upon the nostalgic mythology surrounding adolescence in America. Adolescence, after all, is a slippery concept, and SPARKS hopes to offer a portrait of this slippage. It is said that one can never really ‘come home’. Expectations and memories clash with brutal realities causing a dreamlike— or perhaps nightmarish— experience. Nisan’s story is one of selfish, deluded homecoming, centering on a violent act of botched revenge. When she realizes her little sister’s problem, she regresses to tactics learned from the playground. Yasemin, though younger, stays mature and stoic in order to survive her situation— a situation she has not been able to flee like Nisan has, who is in town for just the weekend. The mistake often made around violence like this is that despite instincts to want “save” someone from an unhealthy relationship, one must instead empower victims to make their own decisions rather than making decisions for them. SPARKS LAMPINI tells the story of this honest mistake, driven and derided by impotence and love.