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Director's Statement
My favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, once said, “one remembers how fascinating the most ordinary everyday things are to a child, because they see them all as marvelous…[but] when we get to thinking of everything in terms of survival and profit value, as we do, then the shapes of scratches on the floor cease to have magic.”
Miriam’s Balloons is my first attempt to create a film that transports you to a world in which the “scratches on the floor” still have magic and I very much hope you enjoy it.
The film itself deals with the issue of death as integral to the cycle of life and the lengths to which we will go for the chance to spend even one more moment with the ones we love. I have always been fascinated with death and the negative feelings we associate with it. If Heaven is supposed to be the greatest place ever, then why does death create so much sadness? Death forces an end to the personal relationships we’ve built with those we care about, but to avoid death would be to also avoid those personal relationships, without which there can be no love, loyalty or happiness.
To adults, death is seen as taking those things away. But for children who have not had an adult lifetime to develop fears of death and loss, it might be possible to see death as a marvelous and fascinating thing, maybe even as a friend. This is why, rather than making a movie with scared and fearful grown-ups, I decided to make something different, with balloons and children and vibrant colors.
-Dan
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