Upward Growth
Noah Gavrich
Upward Growth from Noah Gavrich on Vimeo.
Filmmaker's Statement on "Upward Growth":
This was a project I made during my junior year in college. I was at a place where I felt stuck in school, and with a daily anxiety about not making the most of my time there or what I would do after. Part of this notion came about because during this semester I had a fascination with the businessmen that worked around my school. When I wanted to change my environment, I walked across the street to get food at one of two places, either 'Cafe La France' or the well named 'Corporate Cafe,' both of which were in the lobbies of office buildings. I wondered what all these people did for work. I imagined they were accountants but couldn't imagine what they would account.
Eating a chicken salad sandwich in an environment so bland did two things for me. It made me feel different; special and youthful, with an optimistic outlook on the paths my life could take. Second, maybe simultaneously, it made me wonder if these men were always accountants, from the womb to the tomb, or if they were like me when they were younger, and also felt special and different and with so much to give. I alternated between optimism and stress: was I not taking advantage of my youth, and would the path from art student to accountant be one that I would look back upon, scratching my head, saying "What the hell happened?" That was the inspiration for this film; a romanticized image of youth with a hard cut to 'reality' breaking its teenage stride.
Noah Gavrich is a filmmaker from the San Francisco Bay Area who works in live action and animation. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 exploring his obsessions with old movies, the desert, and americana in all his work. He is currently working on a documentary about Elvis Tribute Artists among other personal projects. But enough about him, how are you? Website: noahgavrich.com