"The Passion Project": Full transcript from the movie

The Passion Project—Full Transcription

Ray: Life is one big great adventure.

Samira: Passion is a desire to do, or accomplish, or feel love without…without any barriers.

Ray: In order to love life you have to find your passion; you have to find what truly makes you happy and when you find what truly makes you happy you gotta chase after it; you gotta take those risks.

Andrew: A passion is something that you just wanna get up in the morning and just do it and not think twice about it--it’s almost like second nature.

Tiffany: It’s something that drives you, that excites you, makes you feel good.

Elaine: The amazing things that the body can do either coming out within movement through speech through song through spirituality.

Narration: Our age is said to be the generation that is quiet and often I wonder why. I see people of orange blue rainbow and polka dotted. Expressions of different trails traveled and stories of failure and triumph--what is silent about us. Have we not kept our youthful curiosity and stumbled upon treasures undiscovered? And shouted from the mountain tops what we have found? Is it that we are silent or is it that someone is just not listening?

Karina: I think I’m passionate about a lot of different things. I’m passionate about writing, I’m passionate about education, I’m passionate about dance, I’m passionate about art.

Tiffany: My passion is helping people. I couldn’t just sit in the house and not be at school or not be at work ‘cause my passion is to interact with people, make new friends, like talk socialize like just be heard and be seen.

Ray: I wanna I wanna help people; I wanna do big things in my life. I’m passionate about dance. It gets…it makes me feel like I can do more with dance like I have a greater greater purpose on this earth.

Samira: I would be happy if I died if I sang one great song. “Happy Birthday.” I starred in one great movie and I traveled the world and got to experience one culture.

Andrew: You know I always had this passion that I’d design the building, my brother engineers it, and my dad builds it.

Emily: Learning about other cultures, other ideas, other people, learning in general is like a passion to me.

Elaine: Being able to finally go out and explore and go hiking it makes my heart soar like it’s just the most amazing feeling. That’s passion.

Samira: I just wanna experience everything; I wanna see everything; I wanna see the world.  I wanna learn about different cultures and within theater you actually get to--although it’s not real--but you get to portray all these different characters. When I started to relook at my life and people were like, “Well why didn’t you like do that, why didn’t you take up singing, why didn’t you take up theater arts, why didn’t you?” And I’m like, “Because you’re not supposed to do that.”

Narration: Isn’t it somewhat twisted how we choose to harvest our children? Parents say, “Follow your dreams, do what you love, believe in the tooth fairy.” Then when they turn 18 as if some kind of ritual they say, “Silly child, dreams are not realistic and no love is not practical; you must work to make money to buy the luxuries that you must have then make more money to keep the luxuries that you must have; work even more just to pay to get to work where you could work just to get paid just so you could pay for the things to work. And don’t forget ya gotta hurry.” And in good faith however we’re given a token of good luck and safe travels--this black armor shiny and invincible--and oh how our parents are so proud that they made this thing always looking forward never looking back and it’s hard at first but at least our family’s happy.

Tiffany: What you take in like it kinda like it shapes you, it molds you, like it defines you.

Andrew: My family was still pushing me to go into a cop you know be a cop and you know do all this stuff.

Karina: They’d rather me be a nurse because they get money or they’re in high demand or something and I don’t wanna do that.

Romeo: It’s hard for me sometimes because there’s something where they expect you to become what they want to become. No one should tell me what to do but um my mom and my dad is trying to do my business in the future and then force me to take it.

Ray: I was considering business because my cousins they’re like you know, “Ray you should just go into business you could make good money from it.” I didn’t know what I want to do with my life.

Karina: My parents are like, “You should do this because this is gonna they’re gonna give you this you’re gonna get that.” But that also makes me fearful like okay so if I don’t do that will I like fucking die or something or will I like not succeed in life? That makes me really scared like to fall into this path that has been unexplored.

Elaine: And what society is to me is a mix of your family, your immediate, your family, your friends their expectations but then you have society who’s telling you like, “Oh get pregnant at 16 and YOLO!”  And they glorify drinking and teen pregnancy and drug use.

Narration: And how gladly we succumb to the hatchet of conformity splitting passion from heart. Our children’s passions once bubbled where their skin meets the bone but blood is ancient and we live in the 21^st century. And there they go out into the world draped in black armor and I ask myself, “How long can they last before colors drain their sight and passion is just a childhood fairytale?”

Samira: I didn’t see that I couldn’t accomplish anything. I didn’t have that; that’s not part of my upbringing, but once I got out into the world that’s where I started slowly finding myself like getting kinda deeper and deeper into my insecurities. I think it’s society or the media that um pressures people to be a certain way and to take the path of like the medical field or uh a lawyer or you know anything of that sort versus being a theater arts major or a arts or a fine arts major.

Romeo: Society is like not doing its job because it has high expectation for people to follow what other people are doing.

Andrew: Maybe it’s a good thing I became an architect but then you see articles on Yahoo where it’s like, “Oh number 1 degree not to get in college is an architectural degree; it’s a 12 percent unemployment rate.”

Emily: We still have that mindset where we need money to survive. Oh, I have money I can buy a plasma T.V. I can buy a uh a king size bed,  a water bed.

Ray: Because we’re kind of brainwashed to like want this because we think it leads to freedom ‘cause eventually when we have money we have freedom. But then what ends up happening is we never make enough money to have this freedom so what ends up happening is we work a typical 40 40 hours a week. The same life everyday and it’s consistent too consistent. Just kinda confines us you know to not have freedom.

Karina: I need to survive so I need to get money enough money so first they think about that. They’re thinking about surviving--and passion--It could come after I guess.

Elaine: I got my insurance license when I was 21 because I wanted to make sure that people thought that I was gonna do something. I thought that you know uh putting on a suit and having this license would make me some kind of adult. When all I wanted to do was run around in the fields and explore and learn and be young.

Ray: In life we are all on a journey but sometimes we lose we lose track of the journey because when you get sucked into the work life, when you get sucked in you know, when you lose your passion that’s when your journey kinda ends.

Narration: And this black armor is nothing but the world’s ego that we inherited pieced together by our family and welded with blue fire by society. Some who wear it admit to feeling lost or scared; others wear it with their head high pretending colors don’t exist.

Samira: When I finally got out into the world I was like, “Holy crap is this what it’s like?”

Karina: A lot of students that come into community college they come in really flustered like I came in here like, “Aw shit I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Samira: But the best advice I felt like I could have been given is to know that my mind is is undecided. To know that just knowing that I’m so undecided that um I’m gonna change every single day. I can change what I believe from moment to moment from day to day from year to year, and you’re gonna continue changing especially that 20 to 30 phase. Like you’re just rapidly changing and you’re so confused and you’re so lost and if someone had just stopped me and told me it’s okay--like explore it, go with it.

Narration: The classroom: Imagine it as a temple removed from society’s influences harboring a vault where time ceases to exist and where wisdom is practiced. Imagine a thousand possibilities between teacher and student waiting to unfold. Imagine passion burning away the black armor.

Samira: Do I think a teacher should start going into the classroom with a vocabulary of passion? Absolutely, YES.

Emily: They should consider passion because how can they invest in the student you know if they don’t know the student has passion?

Samira: There is a lack of that raw passion and there is a lack of wanting to explore each child’s mind.

Tiffany: If you wanna become in tune with your class then you have to get personal with them; like you have to do projects or assignments to kinda let them like for them to let you know what type of person they are. Just the that fact that you’re aware and you know and you care enough to think about it and talk about it. Like that’s being in tune with our world.

Ray: Students have to feel like they’re at home so if they wanna be comfortable they gotta get comfortable with the teacher. We kinda have to know about the teacher and we gotta feel like the teacher is real, like he really or she or he or she really truly wants to help us.

Andrew: You know actually sit down with a student during your office hours and force them to come in even if it’s like, “Hey I’ll give you 2 points extra credit.”

Emily: I’ve been in many classrooms where the teacher just teaches and doesn’t interact with the students much.

Elaine: He would be like, “Oh well you guys failed this first midterm; you might as well just drop the class now; there’s no way, there’s no way.” Like he would just always put the students down or like, “Oh you might as well be goin runnin off at the beach ‘cause if you don’t get this then just forget it.”

Emily: The teacher’s job in instilling passion and I’ve had several teacher’s who’ve done that, is constant communication with the students, constant reassurance.

Ray: A great teacher is always like a student because they’re always learning so they’re always learning new and better ways to do something.

Karina: Choreography is mathematics or like the equation: this what it is and this is how you get to it and the steps you know they’re eight counts so this is how you what you do and how you get to the ending. But if you don’t add your own flavor to it like if you don’t add like the teacher is not adding his own style to the way that he’s teaching, the content it’s not gonna be lively.

Samira: In circles, um the instructor is also a part of the circle and not in the center just to to create that safety zone because then there’s not the focus on the instructor. It’s kind of like you’re focusing on people and getting their vibe.

Ray: A student has to be able to relate to the teacher so when a teacher is a student he or she can truly uh just teach better ‘cause he or she can relate.

Narration: Evolution has been very kind to this trait empathy a graceful goddess that even science proves worthy of existence. Scientists have discovered something in the brain called mirror neurons that are triggered when we see someone doing something that we have done before. For instance, if we see someone pick up a cup our brain will act as if we are the ones doing that, but it goes farther than that. If we recognize a universal feeling like boredom or being loved our mirror neurons return us to that mental state as if we are the ones being bored or loved. It turns out that this somewhat antique trait is how early humans first began to learn. It is through this sensory mimicry and imitation that we learn how to hunt, build, make art, and it is still how we learn best today. Feelings are contagious, good or bad. If the teacher feels in his gut that what he is teaching is essential the student will think so too. If the teacher is exploring, so too will the student. If the teacher is learning, so too will the student. In order to create this chamber of timelessness, this vault of free exploration, it doesn’t stop with the teacher. Student to student relationships are just as essential.

Ray: Just every every week or so we would get into group activities just get to know the people around us. You know the more we talk to them, the more we see them, the more we get comfortable with them.

Tiffany: We did collabs every week with our you know with people we wanted to and he walked around he helped us; that’s kinda like you know instilling like the here and the now. You’re not just all sitting at a desk in every row and just listening to the teacher. You’re learning from each other and he’s going around helping you.

Narration: Evolution also smiles upon the gentle characteristic of cooperation. When neuroscientists observe subjects cooperating they find that a rush of dopamine is released deep in the midbrain. This is the brain’s way of saying that social cooperation provides the same kick as sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll! And just as empathy offers heightened awareness and quicker understanding, so too does cooperation.

Samira: You can learn everything you want um by reading, but until you have someone else to kind of bounce off what what’s going on in your head and to help interpret it and you talk back and forth with people, it starts to um it starts to fester more thoughts and um more ideas which may lead you from one path. It’s kind of like that domino effect; it may lead you from one path to the next path to the next path until you find your path.

Andrew: I think it’s somewhat kind of like planting that seed of you know,  “Go try this.” You know, ‘cause I don’t know everything in the world but if I take a little bit from everyone in the world you know I could could learn a little bit, you know, bit by bit.

Elaine: Because you have students from so many different areas of life and they’re all throwing out ideas. That’s what’s fresh and that’s what’s new and that’s what’s gonna create this better world is this new, these ideas, these moldings.

Romeo: In a classroom it is like a home that people can be their self and let their thoughts and things out to other people without, without having judged.

Karina: Education is supposed to teach you to respect others and to respect different ideas and how to work with each other. 

Andrew: I was exposed to new things and how some people you know view their world basically. So it’s helped me you know get an understanding of of what, you know, how other people think.

Ray: Without talking to these students without getting to know them you know I have closed doors. I can’t, I can’t pursue what I would wanna do, and so just getting comfortable with everybody around you knowing people in general opens all these doors of possibilities that leads to, that leads to many different possibilities.

Emily: People want a family; community is family you know where we come together, we meet, we hangout. It helped me see a bigger picture see the bigger that it’s not all about me. Even though I am a key key figure a key chess piece it’s not just about me, it’s about the whole set.

Narration: Allowing students to teach each other, grow solidarity, trust and comfort between each other allows for now to rid themselves of their time consuming ego and rather spend time paying attention to the different worlds around them. And what blooms from this deep empathetic appreciation for others is followed by a deep appreciation for yourself. We find that when you’re surrounded by others exploring and expressing you can’t help but explore and express your own self, triggering the mirror neurons. And what was at first a lesson of exploring and loving others soon becomes a lesson of exploring and loving yourself. And once this cycle begins only the gods themselves can stop it.

Karina: I feel like passion draws me because um it’s something that I want myself too. I wanna feel that too.

Romeo: We can learn things about ourself that we don’t know or other people by just listening to them.

Samira: You start to feel comfortable within yourself. Like even if every single person’s story was different and no one was like each other’s, that right there teaches you that your journey is okay and it’s okay to be here.

Karina: The more passionate or the more that you love something, the more that you learn from it because you’re you’re I guess you’re separating yourself from yourself. You’re having like an out of body experience and you it’s like a reflection almost like wow this is so beautiful and I wanna do this forever. Like I wanna be in this moment and then you’re just reflecting upon it I guess.

Samira: One of my favorite quotes is ‘to thine own self be true’ and as long as you’re true to yourself then you can then you can love unconditionally. Like you can accept people unconditionally because you’re not worried about what people think about you.

Romeo: Students need to know to find themselves first. As a student if you don’t know ourself, how we know what we want in life?

Tifany: I honestly do believe that like knowing who you are like your truer self does have a lot to do with our passion. Especially because like how our generation is now or society you know everybody’s the same. Like even like statistics, you know they feel like well “Shoot, you know I’m really part of that statistic so I’m gonna be like that.”  But it’s like, no, like you’re supposed to beat the statistic and come out on top as your own person.

Elaine: If you don’t know who you are you will never find out what you want.

Ray: When you start getting comfortable with yourself, you can you can start you know you can start coming outside of the box. Like you can, like for me I used to be shy so like I wasn’t able to talk to all these people around me to build these connections. And now you know I got more comfortable with myself through, you know, a series of events such as, you know, school or just you know hanging out with friends and getting comfortable with people around me.

Emily: One person’s passion can flourish into and become other people’s passions.

Elaine: When I’m standing on the top of a cliff on the edge of the Pacific ocean along highway 1 and I’m holding my arms out and I feel my heart pounding and it just this emotion just overcomes me, I want everyone to feel that. So yeah, I will exploit that and I will write about it or take a picture of it and put moods into it through Instagram or filters or you know I will exploit it because I believe that everyone should feel what I’m feeling at that moment.

Emily: It’s hard to hide a passion because it’s like a little flame. It’s like a little spark that can ignite in your heart and it can ignite other people too. You know once a fire starts, you can’t really put it out.

Andrew’s girl friend: It makes you happy once you wanna share that with others again. Like it’s the whole sharing your passion with others. I’m passionate about certain things and you know I like to let people know. I’m open about my passions. I’m open about my love for things.

Narration: Students soon notice that this black armor, this ego, doesn’t protect or prepare them at all, but instead creates a weak and fearful unprepared baby. They learn to avoid any situation where they may fail and fail to learn what to do when they fall. And everybody falls eventually.

Samira: I almost feel like once we graduate they were feeding us to the wolves. I felt like I was fed to the wolves. I had no idea what was going on outside in the world.

Karina: I think my parents shelter me because they love me and because they wanna protect me, but when I go into the real world or like I’m on my own when I fall it’s gonna be hard. And I’m not gonna know how to get up. Like I’m gonna be fucked up, but I’ll learn but they’re like it’s almost like it’s own poison. Like you’re trying to help me, yes, you’re trying to protect me but I’m not really learning from it. I’m not experiencing what I should be experiencing.

Ray: Through school and just through life in general like you know we fail and we we become successful you know at times. So through failure and through success uh we can start becoming better and we can start learning you know how to how to not fail.

Elaine: What is life without failure. If you don’t fail at something you’ll never figure out what you’re good at.

Andrew: You know life is a bunch of hoops you gotta jump through to get to your goal to get to whatever you wanna get to. So I thought okay well sure you might think it’s a lot of hoops but in the long run it does pay off.

Romeo: Problems there’s always problems we face. We can learn from it and rebuild our life and making better choices.

Narration: Once the door to the vault is sealed and the classroom undertakes its transformation into a utopia concealed from the outside world, it creates a paradox of exploration and comfort, of expression and absorption. Something more divine than armor is being built.

Ray: We are definitely scared to mistakes in the classroom because it is embarrassing.

Karina: If the environment that I’m in encourages risks, then I’m not gonna be afraid to try things.

Ray: We wanna get everybody to know each other because when everybody knows each other we feel we feel more comfortable. We’re afraid to make mistakes because we don’t we don’t know what the other person is thinking about us. But when we know the other person we feel more comfortable like we can you know you can make a mistake. We can play it off.

Samira: Alleviating that stress. It doesn’t change what’s going on outside of you it but it starts it slowly will start to change how you deal with it. Knowing that I can come here every day; it’s a safe environment. I can do what I need to do.

Ray: The reason why you would take a risk is because it’s a better outcome, so why wouldn’t you take a risk to pursue a better outcome?

Karina: There’s lessons in risk that nothing else can teach you.

Ray: The teacher should definitely encourage us to take risks because without taking risks you’re stuck in one place. It’s when you take these risks uh when you pursue, it makes you pursue different things to open doors to possibilities.

Karina: Like if I’m learning that from my own classroom in my own fucking college then I’m not gonna be afraid to do that out there. Yes it’s a risk; oh I fucking failed but I learn. I’m gonna learn from it.

Narration: Instead of fearing mistakes we can learn to welcome them as a mentor teaching valuable skills of appreciation and hard work so when students step into the real world they are prepared to face all that life offers, welcoming her as a beautiful bride packaged with lessons and hardships.

Elaine: Doing that paper was like being on the hill and then getting the grade on it was like being at the bottom and I was like *gasp*  so I have to do it over again and when I climbed the next hill it was an even bigger hill and when I you know did better I was like, damn, I was so happy.

Andrew: I think you have to succeed and fail to appreciate what you have. You know you see all your failures and then you you take into account those failures and then you think okay well now you have a a successful you know you succeed for once. You know, you appreciate that.

Karina: Some texts were really hard for me and those were really inspiring and the teacher’s were really good and they inspired me to be myself or try to tap into that self that I haven’t yet.

Ray: If a teacher can be motivational we can we can we can feel successful even after failing.

Narration: When teachers present their discipline’s content while not taking into account who they are teaching, teachers are actually disrespecting their discipline. Instead, teachers should consider the nature of things: the nature of a sister, a brother, a daughter, a son, a clerk, a cashier, a human. It is easy to name their titles but understanding their nature will dictate how we teach them. Are we teaching them so their mind is swollen or are we teaching them so their spirits are full?

Karina: Really a lot of the teacher’s think that the content is enough. Like it’s not enough. Because I don’t understand it. I don’t see the value in it. So I mean yes I see somewhat value I have to get I have to have this class so I can pass and go to a university, but that’s it, Like can you can you tell me why this is important for me to understand? Can you tell me why this is an important skill to gain?

Narration: Give students universal tools in every class no matter what the subject no matter what the discipline. Weaving in these universal tools while you teach your content will melt your school lessons into life lessons always ready to be swiftly utilized in the real world when needed, from math to art. What exactly are those tools:

Karina: The universal tools, like endurance, passion, love.

Andrew: Love’s gotta be in there, um hardworking.

Emily: Critical thinking.

Andrew:  My own diligence. All those skills are just kinda intertwined. Whether it be the values or the ethics or the hardworking, you know your passions all your skills are combined into one and then you you have all these different passions.

Karina: You should be passionate about the basic things in life like sharing your thoughts your ideas and appreciating others and fucking doing like the basic humanistic thing.

Narration: Our educational system can take part in building this false ego or it could take part in breaking it down. A school should use time wisely by choosing to ride a long parallel with time not rushing it. But it’s up to the entire school not just the class. Teachers need to be shown love and excitement as well from students to the colleague to the admin. If teachers aren’t loved and respected, how can they continue to love and respect their students? If teachers aren’t inspired to follow their passion how can they inspire students?

Samira: Community college is technically one of the avenues where you are able to explore. You know, you are able to do that um versus a university but if we take that away we will have so many people with unfulfilled passions. We’ll have so many adults um who are unhappy in their lives and they’re just moving forward. We’ll have a society of of of of robots you know because you’re doing exactly what you don’t wanna do because you’ve been forced to hurry up and take this path. Because you gotta take it right now or else you’re gonna miss out on life.

Karina: It’s becoming more of a you need to have this certain type of goal versus these different little pathways like so you can explore different things. So it’s becoming a straight like okay fucking what’s that thing called when you put things on a machine and it’s just going like that—an assembly line--so you’re going through these classes to get the same type of goal when a lot of students they don’t even know what they’re doing. How they gonna get on the same pathway?

Samira: We would lose so many people to that; we would have so many unfulfilled passions.

Karina: Teachers are sometimes burnt out after being in the game for so long that they forget the initial the intial thing that brought them there. So I don’t know I guess they have to be reminded and I guess that’s how students come into play. Students have to remind teachers why they were there in the first place and to bring back passion into the classroom so passion can be like contagious to everybody!

Closing Text on Screen: The best advice I could have been given is to know that my mind is undecided.

Samira Hamid