👋 Hey, blog!
🎥 This week's film was AKA Don Bonus. It was a documentary that showed the life of an Asian American high school student named Don.
👍 This film was very real and I was impressed by how Don took on the challenge to show his life as it was. He recorded many hours of footage, but it was compressed to be less than an hour long. Even though it was a short film, we got to see his life on a personal level. We saw his life at home. We saw his life at school. We were even introduced to his family members and friends.
🤔 While watching this film, I had many deja vu moments. He lived in a bad neighborhood where gunshots hit his house. Even young neighbors broke their windows. I used to live in a neighborhood just like that when I was younger. Seeing him struggle to stay on track in school reminded me of many of my old elementary school classmates. They were constantly conflicted with the urge to escape the "ghetto", yet they had connections with gangs just like Don's younger brother who was negatively influenced by his surroundings. I was glad that Don had an older brother who could inspire him to be on the right track, and I'm glad he pushed through in order to graduate high school.
👀 I would recommend this film if you enjoy documentaries. It can remind you of the past with its camera quality and school vibes. It is a very unfiltered film, so if you're not too fond of those, maybe you shouldn't watch it.
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I think your blog really hit on something that documentaries (especially this one) do really well. They are very relatable for viewers. They seem to be more relatable oftentimes because you know that the stories are relatively true. I think the form of this one especially puts you in Don's perspective.
ReplyDeleteI like how you point out how Don's experiences relate to your own because there are a lot of Americans out there who have that experience. I don't live in a very good neighborhood at all and even though my family isn't as poor as Don's the struggle of getting out of an area like that is awful for a person. I feel like we want Don to get out of there so much because we have that similar experience with him.
ReplyDeleteI also related to Don's struggles in a lower working class neighborhood, especially how he had to balance financial instability at home with demands of school life. I agree with you that the film's unfiltered aesthetic made it feel more intimate and real. I always wish that we had more information about what happened to Don and his family after the filming.
ReplyDeleteI think that having the same experience with film is an exciting thing. But in this documentary, because I didn't live in America, I don't know what's American's life used to be, I felt nervous when there had a gunshot.
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