Today I shoot 4K braw. Not so for RICE. RICE takes place in 2017, but it was shot with the 80s in mind - a world without cell phones, internet or 12k video. A world that looked ahead and not into a small screen. But I digress.
RICE was shot on digital with a 1/2“ sensor and a fixed zoom lens with a depth of field adaptor attached to its nose that allowed for old manual prime lenses to be attached to it. I always focused on two different focus rings, all depending on the zoom position, plus an occasional adjustment of the depth of field adaptor. The camera had internal ND filters and the manual primes had their own exposure rings, with clicking positions. Can’t say I miss it, but as a producer’s decision, it was the ideal tool to be able to shoot a feature length movie during an unknown number of years, in terms of cost, plus presenting us with a look somewhat reminiscent of old color film. Yet RICE is its own. We shot with this camera set up for RICE during approximately 7 years, from new. In fact, on completion of the last shoot after seven years and 53 scenes and locations, the camera fell on hard ground, from a stool, and was no longer serviceable. It definitely knew its own purpose. With a strange attachment to it and feeling like a traitor, I sold its remains and moved on to post production.

The story in RICE is an attempt to reconcile my own past through the meeting between two protagonists, Helen and Sebastian. The male protagonist was written from a blurred memory of my experiences as a child during a sudden influx of foreign students into the school I attended due to a war breaking between Argentina and the UK. The visceral feeling of alienation I experienced from an early age, through my silent upbringing and the school I attended, is held within the main male character’s trauma and released when he meets the female protagonist, just like I had my own feelings of marginalization released when I met all those foreign students who joined my old British School, for it was then that I felt seen for the first time.
Helen, from a different perspective, is a written fantasy of how my mother’s life could have been, had she not been institutionalized at age 15 and stifled by culture, her sister’s envy, and the barbaric mental health practices of their time. Unlike my mother, whose differences, talents, dreams and aliveness were “treated” and medicated out of her in a bid to make others more comfortable in her intense presence, Helen was written to take charge of her life and to value, create, protect and maintain enough space to nurture the parts of herself, that would otherwise be singled out as “different” and potentially feared by others. Helen was written to understand these parts, integrate them and finally be at peace with herself. This, in connection with Sebastian’s role, allowed me to observe my own demons and maybe even resolve some. But this was not the story I wanted to shoot. The truth is that it became so because of the loss of a friend. Or maybe two. That is how this screenplay was born.

As a species rapidly disconnecting from or degrading the very things that make all life sustainable - sunlight, soil quality, the quality of our air, our oceans, our woods, our crops and the food that we put into our bodies, there are few issues as important to everyone on the planet, whether we are aware of it or not. I personally acknowledge a direct relationship between the quality of all that we take in, and our health. This love story is my humble contribution to simply highlight these relationships and remind us that be it essential human connection or our food, we are all individually responsible and in charge of figuring out what fuel is best.