Project outline

Adán is a twenty-minute narrative film registered with the Screen Actor's Guild and filmed in New York in January 2009. Pre-production, (fundraising, location scouting, and casting), began in August 2008 and continued through December, and post-production (editing, sound mixing, and scoring) is currently under way, with a completion date set for April 2009. The film will be aggressively submitted to a variety of student and professional film festivals.

Plot summary

Miguel Correos is a high school math teacher in his hometown of Latacunga, Ecuador, and his daily life is dictated by his need for control and order. This lifestyle and outlook stand in stark contrast to those of Adán, his best childhood friend. Pursuing adventure and the promise of America, Adán moved to New York City ten years ago and ended up teaching Spanish in a public school.

While eating dinner one night, Miguel sees on TV that there has been a shooting in the school where Adán works. Many people are dead, many more are wounded, and no one can tell Adán's parents whether or not their son is alive. Desperate, they ask Miguel to go to New York to find him.

The journey he undertakes forces him into an environment of complete uncertainty and eventually becomes as much a search for understanding and a new sense of self as it is a search for Adán. While navigating a strange city and culture, Miguel struggles to find order and reason in the face of chance and to find humanity amidst the incomprehensible tragedy of school violence.

Director's statement

At its core, this is a simple story about a man trying to find his childhood friend. But while this provides Miguel's initial motivation and gives shape to the plot, what really fascinates me is the confluence of issues in his life and in our society that makes this journey important.

I spent a summer teaching English in Latacunga, Ecuador and my experiences there were a major influence on the script. Miguel's character is not based on any one person, but the sheltered sense of order that he maintains was very present in the culture of Latacunga. On the other hand, school violence is something that I think Americans have largely come to accept, and it takes an outsider's perspective to illustrate how insane it really is. The conflict, then, is between a sheltered young man and a jaded society as they both try to deal with the issue of random violence. The story, however, belongs to Miguel, and while this journey alone does not move him into adulthood, Adán is nonetheless a coming-of-age tale.

Intent

Our plan is to market the film to as wide an array of venues as possible. It is registered with the Screen Actor's Guild as a Short Film, which means that it is eligible for all film festivals, but since it is a thesis project, it is eligible to be entered in student festivals as well. It will also be screened at Cornell along with other student work, and as part of the Latin American Studies Program film series. We plan to pursue exhibition at other local venues in Ithaca, New York City, and elsewhere.