Filmmaker Statement

On a visit to my mom’s province in 2019, my mom, her cousins, and her friends cooked a lot of food and rented a karaoke cabana by the water. The afternoon I spent with them was familiar: I idled around; answered prying questions about life, love, and work; and ate plates of food until my stomach hurt. I watched them sing karaoke and dance and cackle and talk at each other very loudly. At some point, one of my aunties slowed things down with "Boulevard" by Dan Byrd. The performance was just like any other one I had seen growing up, but there was something in its slowness — and seeing my aunties 12 years older than they were when I last saw them on Thanksgiving Day, 2006. WHEN YOU LEFT ME ON THAT BOULEVARD is a memory built from my emotional memory of this moment and others like it. It is my attempt to capture the vibrance of my family and community in a lived-in time and place, especially as my own memory becomes fuzzier.