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Paul Whiteside Smart

 

    I worked a lifetime in small town newspapers, bringing as much creativity as I could muster and organize into community settings. Now retired, I work to bring community into the creative writing, radio work,  films, and other projects I am finally free to pursue. I embrace intuition and delight in the beauty of this world's contradictions. I struggle to make things happen as an ongoing process of living, rather than a drive to make product. I trust that audiences are intelligent, perceptive, and in search of works that inspire their own long-hidden ability to make art as part of their lives. The universe is creative. We should be, as well. 

   

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      In my non-fiction writing, I explore what changes, what remains the same. I work with the past as a collaborator in my fiction. My films and radio work feed off collective energy, and involve a blend of the real, the mythic, and improvised philosophizing. My life is about engaging with the world as fully as possible. I sense the start of a new renaissance.

    We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory, which can be magic.

    Four teenagers, two American and two Mexican, remember how they met when they were children, which we watch as they narrate the ways in which growth has changed the ways in which they see the world. The film captures the beauty we find around us as kids, and the magic we can still find remembering. It explores the world as kids see it: as magical and embracing.

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    The film had its genesis in DON BARRY, my previous work. I wanted to explore similar theses involving creativity and aging, albeit from a different perspective: from the eyes of a child. We began working with two local boys in playful settings in Guanajuato, then traveled to Colorado to work with our girls. I created a narration for our young actors older sisters, in the U.S., and two bilingual brothers here in Mexico. A "radio edit" was pieced together from improvised dialogue by our young "actors," age 4 through 8, the narrative elements we recorded with editorial help from our teens, and the musical elements we wanted to incorporate.

     

    Our main production shoot took place over six days in Spring, 2026, with editing in Mexico City throughput the Summer of 2026 and post-production in early October. 

     

    We believe the film that has resulted is as fresh as the world kids see, but also as full of mysterious memories as the world we later enter as adolescents. It is our belief, as collaborators, that the end result fits our culture's needs at this point in our world's history. The idea is to suggest new ways of seeing.

     

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