In four days I leave for Japan. My mother father and I are traveling to see my sister who has been living there for six months. I’m scared and excited and ready to be a family. I’m feeling similar emotions to the times when I shot this video.
I filmed this shortly after graduated college, and continued to shoot little snippets of life over the next few months.
This is dedicated to my Uncle Bob and Aunt Pari who I have been missing a lot lately.
love,
Andrew
So happy to have Father Figure featured on the Vimeo blog today!
Figure Father by Nomadique
Pedro Sosa was released from prison in 2004 and has been been unable to find work since. Now he volunteers as a motivational speaker and tours high schools in Harlem to share his story. This poignant piece shows that through reflection, there can be redemption.
Six weeks before they were to be married, my friend Breanna asked me to help her film a video to play before she walked down the aisle. It was to be a poem to her then fiance Tollef about her readiness for their love in New York City. She shared with me poetry and music and scriptures which had inspired her artistically in preparation to be a bride. After many conversations about our philosophies on love in New York, we filmed and edited this in a day. It was and honest gift of love and it practically put itself together.
I wasn’t there for the wedding this Sunday but it played right before she walked down the aisle. Congratulations and blessings Breanna and Tollef!
- Andrew
Exciting news! “Figure Father” was featured on the front page of Vimeo today. If you haven’t yet, read about it/watch it in our previous post below or at http://vimeo.com/nomadique/figurefather.
In January of 2011, I set out to make a short film which could shed light on our country’s job crisis through the story of an ex-convict searching for a job. I was introduced to Pedro through a friend who worked as a fatherhood counselor for ex-convicts in Harlem. Pedro was 49, looking for a job in construction, and willing to share his story with me. With multiple assaults, drug offenses, and two homicides on his record, it wasn’t likely that the outcome of my film was going to be positive, but I knew beneath his hardships his charisma and heart would reach people.
We met for the first time on a snowy day in Harlem. Sitting face to face in a Jamaican restaurant on 125th street, Pedro pointed a chicken wing at me and repeated, “God will hold your hand, but the devil is waiting for you to fall”. This was the first time I’d heard his mantra, and I thought he was talking about his job search.
We became friends over the following weeks through long walks and boxing lessons. In that time he didn’t make it to one job interview given all the complications of transferring medicaid, welfare, and job transcripts from his halfway house to his three quarter house. I wasn’t sure what aspect of his story I could actually convey on film until the day we took a trip to where he grew up, the projects of Hoboken. It was there that I met Tony, his twenty one year old son. I did the math on the back of my PATH train ticket home to realize that Pedro had only been out of jail for four years of Tony’s entire life. It hit me that while this man was in need of a job, his desire to become a father to his son was far more important to both of us.
Over the following months I filmed them box, Tony feeling grateful for the time with his father, Pedro feeling excited that his son might become a professional boxer. All the while I spent time with each of them individually, digging up repressed memories in their relationship, and hitting walls where certain memories had been permanently blocked out. Pedro was severely abused as a child, and raised by the streets. Tony’s father was never there, and also raised by the streets. Coming from a home with two loving parents I proceeded into this foreign territory with caution and sympathy.
Tony became a father during the course of shooting and the training sessions ceased. They stopped spending as much time together, and Pedro refocused on getting a job. This film is a window into a brief moment in their lives in which a new chapter in fatherhood began. Since the completion of the film I connected Pedro with a former prison chaplain who counsels at a church near his home in Harlem. He is still jobless but is on good terms with his son. Tony still lives in Hoboken and his baby girl is nearly six months old.
- Andrew
We’re incredibly proud to share a video produced by our very own Jimmy Chalk for The New York Times. Check it out!
Today our good friends and collaborators Mason Jar Music released the trailer for The Sea In Between, a feature length documentary shot in Mayne Island, B.C. with singer/songwriter Josh Garrels. We are so happy to have also been a part of this incredible experience and to share it with you all!
MJM is also releasing a never before seen video & audio download of Josh and 7-piece ensemble performing “Slip Away” live on a rocky beach in Mayne Island as well as a download of “Mason Jar Music Presents… Josh Garrels” in exchange for a $5 donation to the completion of the film. Please check out http://theseainbetween.com/store/ for more info!
Nomadique is photographer Sasha Arutyunova, journalist Jimmy Chalk, cinematographer Andrew Ellis, and composer Jonathan Seale—four friends with a knack for storytelling and an insatiable wanderlust.
Our tireless pursuit of story carries us to the corners of the globe, from the brick kilns of south India and the cobblestone streets of Prague to the Amazon rainforest and occasionally, back home to New York City, where we edit, write, blog, and figure out how to do it all over again.
Nomadique’s work has appeared in New York Times, Huffington Post, Nat Geo Music, Food Network, NDTV Hindu, New Indian Express, and International Justice Mission’s Nyaya Pathrika, and our commercial and non-profit clients include Family Records and Mason Jar Music.
