LIVIN G WITH S PIRIT
The ball started gathering speed when I reached out to the David Lynch Masters in Film (DLMA) to recruit the best faculty, staff, students and alumni of Lynch’s signature film program. Brilliant alumnus, Amine Kouider and
DLF.tv head Sam Lieb signed on as co-directors, along with some top Hollywood players as executive producers. We now had our core team. [8. Recruit Your Core Team] I felt like Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven, assembling the crack shots of Fairfield’s growing film family. [Ed. Note: Fairfield, Iowa, a small town in the heartland of the US, is a hotbed of creative and entrepreneurial energy, and is also one of the largest meditation communities in the world.] Our goal was not to save a dusty Mexican
town from banditos but to realize all the subtle intricacies inherent in ‘Mysteries of Love’ in a five-minute short film that would capture Lynch and Badalamenti’s song and touch the hearts of all who saw it. Truly, no mean feat. [2. Know your core values] [9. Communicate the parts and the whole] There was something about this archetypal
theme of love—love as the inevitable force of Nature that seeks out those who are meant to be together—that acted as a magical magnet to attract all the key people of our team. For example, Zach Peel-McGregor, an A-list cinematographer in Australia, happened to be flying in to visit his fiancee the weekend of our shoot. He joined us on the set, coming straight off his 40-hour flight from Downunder, for an intense weekend shoot of 18-hour days. French actor Guillaume Campanacci flew in as our male lead. Noted performance artists, S.B Woods and Cherie Sampson came in as the Cocoon Woman and the Tree Woman. And so the ball kept on rolling. [5. Fully engaged, fully alive] All these forces converged in an intense three-
day shoot over the first weekend in March, culminating in an almost all-nighter in our ‘secret garden’ pine forest in freezing temperatures. [7. Re-assess, re-evaluate, change] Spirits were always high as our crack team
worked together almost seamlessly. Then we had to compress about two months of editing into five days, with three editors working in cross- country locations. [6. Learn From Obstacles] Then there was our bated-breath submission to David and the producers of David’s LA concert, and as our growing luck would have it, one other video that was being considered for inclusion did not get finished in time. And finally, the big breath release as David approved this to be the only music video included in this epic concert
8 AUGUST 2015
headlined by Duran Duran and featuring performances by all of Lynch’s other favorite artists—Moby, Donovan, Chrysta Bell, Sky Ferreira, Karen O, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and many others. Our core team in Fairfield flew out for the premiere, joining our LA-based
talent at the theatre at The Ace Hotel in downtown LA for one of the most powerful evenings of music that we’ve ever seen. It felt great to see our seed impulse completely realized and played out on a giant screen in this ornate gilded theater. A hushed silence followed the premiere. Then the audience responded with a powerful roll of applause. We had made it. The night climaxed with one of the most outrageous after-parties I’ve ever seen, culminating in dancing in the streets with LA’s talented homeless and eating tacos with Duran Duran. Truly a night to remember. But it was more than a fleeting experience, as an inner ‘something’ had
grown through our process. Through all the ups and downs, our agonies and ecstasies, love indeed had conquered all. More so, the subtler richness of the mysteries had made our journey into love ever the more beguiling. [2. Know your core values]
PHOTO: JIM DAVIS
(C) 2015 MARC BARAKA
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