Pandemic Meditations: Remnants by Dahveed Bullis

You've reached Pandemic Meditations, a weekly series in which creative people share responses to life in the pandemic. This week, I'm pleased to welcome director and actor Dahveed Bullis to the series, and to share the first film meditation. Please watch, enjoy, and share his short film Remnants with your friends, neighbors, and family. Preceding the film, Dahveed provides notes about its making. (~20 minutes long).  

(If you'd rather watch the film directly on YouTube, use this link: https://tinyurl.com/y6gr5eaa)

Thanks, Dahveed, and all of those involved in the making of Remnants. Your energy, focus, ingenuity, and effort is such a gift, and I appreciate it so much. As I know our readers do too. . 

~ E.P.

😷 

On the Making of Remnants, a Short Film

by Dahveed Bullis

The only word I have been able to find for the Pandemic before us has been "tragic." Whether in regards to how sections of leadership has handled it, or how divisive and separate things have become, I have seen tragedy all around me since March. 

I am tired. 

Through this Pandemic though, I have witnessed beauty. I have seen artists persevere as they have continued to create regardless of what the world experiences around them--somehow feeling compelled to continue to speak on the climate of their culture, just like the long history of artists before them. 

I have found myself becoming a filmmaker. A wild transition from theatre artist. After being an adjunct at Spokane Falls Community College, which had me directing a freshly adapted play into a film through Zoom, I found myself clawing to learn more about this newfound craft. 

As a lover of tragedy, I could not help but be inspired to tell a bit of tragedy when asked for my Pandemic Meditation. 

In chapter 6 of Aristotle's Poetics he states:

"So tragedy is an imitation not of people, but of action, life, and happiness or unhappiness, while happiness and unhappiness have their being in activity, and come to completion not in a quality but in some sort of action …Therefore it is deeds and the story that are the end at which tragedy aims, and in all things the end is what matters most …So the source that governs tragedy in the way that the soul governs life is the story."

Remnants was born on the heels of these contemplations. 

I invite you into Holden's world. 

This film encompassed collaboration from so many incredible artists, and we worked for months to put this together. I am forever grateful for the chance to create and a platform to do so with. I hope you enjoy the piece, as it is my first independent film. 

Ask yourself, after months of isolation, how do you manage to meet outside expectations if your inner life is turmoil?

🎥

And now, for this week's featured presentation, Remnants, directed and acted by Dahveed Bullis:

❤

Dahveed Bullis

Dahveed Bullis lives and works in Spokane as an actor, director, instructor, and musician. He graduated from EWU, and helped found Spokane Theatre Arts Council. He recently joined the Company Ballet School to direct their Theatre Arts Program. And, pre-pandemic, you could find him acting alongside Marjorie Powell in the improv duo The Seagull Sloths. He's father to a son made of the moon and stars.

😷 Check back every week for new Pandemic Meditations. Catch up on what you've missed here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/pandemic-meditations-series.html