I’ve always said I don’t make films because I want to. I make them because I have to. As a sophomore in high school, I was accepted into the SAYSi media arts studio in San Antonio, Texas, which cultivated my passion for film and video. Under the mentorship of video artist Michael Verdi, I experimented with video paintings, installations and transcendentalist video pieces. At age 17 that I was discovered by filmmaker Pablo Veliz, who soon hired me as director of photography for his first feature film, La Tragedia de Macario, which was recently accepted into the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, along with many other festivals nationwide. After I graduated from high school last year, I began my college career at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City.

“The moment that changed his/her life” was the assignment given for my first freshman film project. As a newcomer to the city I was very alone yet observant of its versatile citizens and the tumultuous lives of each individual. One day I witnessed a homeless man pontificating about AIDS, and he began to cry. No one seemed to listen to him. I knew I found my subject for my film. Partially produced by SVA, without firm supervision from the faculty, I made a film called It’s the Buzz, which nearly frightened my professors when I presented it.

I presented It’s the Buzz on the one-year anniversary of George Bush’s re-election and I participated in a nation-wide protest demanding Bush step down. When I saw the herds of people who passionately gathered in solidarity against Bush, I filmed individuals asking them “why is this protest important?” A young man who was in the Army responded, “…we need to get rid of the entire direction this country is going in. The entire country is being misled, and people don’t care because they have iPods and cable television! –Fuck that!” Another woman claimed that “if we can remind just one person, the average apathetic American that there’s a war going on, then maybe we’ll have progress.” Their words never left me.

A few months later, I saw an advertisement in Times Square for AOL Instant Messenger that had the phrases, “I am video chat, I am text messaging, I am AIM” flashing on large monitors overlooking the streets almost as a deity. It was almost an epiphanal moment when I saw this advertisement and understood that America is cultivating itself to be distracted from the problems of the world as we define ourselves by our technology. And I thought, what if we were all disconnected from our iPods? Would we pay attention more to what’s happening to our government? Would the minority voices of the world be heard and no longer be dismissed like an animal? Maybe not. But just as that emphatic protester claimed, “if we can remind one person,” that’s all it takes. I am Brian Gonzalez and I have a voice that will be heard.