• Favorite Film

    Favorite Film

    In response to the essay question for a scholarship,
    “What is your all-time favorite film? Why?”

    Wow. I have many films that I would call my favorite. I love stories, easily getting sucked into them. But if there’s one movie that I would have to choose, it would probably be…

    I started this essay and then sat for ten minutes trying to pick one movie. I didn’t expect this question to be that hard. This makes me look indecisive, but there are so many films I enjoy that shape who I am as a person. I could write essays about each one. I’ve gotten so invested in so many stories that I decided to make a career out of storytelling. For the sake of this scholarship, I’m going to say The Nightmare Before Christmas. It launched an obsession with folklore and mythology that shaped my writing and art as an animation student.

    I didn’t watch The Nightmare Before Christmas most of my childhood. I saw the previews for it and was a bit disturbed by the animation style, which I now oddly find endearing. I still don’t quite remember if there was a particular moment that prompted me to finally watch it on Halloween at 16. But afterward, I got a little excited and wrote fan-fiction. That prompted me into studying folklore and ghost stories, which became my true love. I now have a deep fascination with tales that follow through centuries and define cultures.

    I’ve even started a blog researching the not-so-well-known and often macabre folklore of minorities; like stories from my mother’s home country of Cambodia. I’m intrigued by what insights stories offer about us as human beings all over the world. As strange as it might be, I have to credit Tim Burton’s story with this career-defining love.

    (The featured image is a little fanart I did for a couple of fanfictions a friend and I wrote.)


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