ALLoT (A Long List of Things)
2014 | 90 minutes
High school is where life starts to get serious. You are becoming the person you were meant to be, and you dream about what you will do. Forty years later – almost a lifetime – what happened? Did things work out the way you imagined? Are you where you want to be? And after all that time – who are you? How are you doing in the performance of your life?
Filmmaker John Sanborn made discoveries by attending his 40th high school reunion with a film crew to interview former classmates, find answers to those questions, and gain a measure of closure. The result is a highly personal video memoir that blends interviews with contemplations and meditations on the unpredictable challenges and life-altering transformations fifteen graduates from Walt Whitman High School faced in the years before they all met again.
And to show us, ultimately, that life is a long list of things.
the 3 versions of sanborn
As with any good memoir, who I am in the story is a character like myself, but something more. Something disruptive and injected into the memories of me and my clasmates and to question what's real and what is remembered. To do this I will be played by 3 forms. My daughter Miranda as my young, innocent self. And Thais Schwab as my angry alter-ego. And me as, well, me.
One sequence is a recurring nightmare that takes place in the halls of my old school. Where am I? Where do I need to be? The anxiety of not knowing what to do or where to go haunts me.
How odd that this ugly place is where so many memories live.
the agony of architecture
Down that hallway, or around that corner lies my past. The walls are a different color but this is where my dreams take place - those scary ones where I am running for a class I will never find, and the halls are filling with water.
Yes, the nightmares started here.
After 40 years the memories fade, but the anger and frustration remain.