Finding Self Through Story
Stowe alumni and cousins Kendra Arimoto and Justin Michael Jeffers grow through ‘before i disappear’
By Robert Delaney
Kendra Arimoto, a writer and performer, and Justin Michael Jeffers, a multimedia visual artist and director, combined their creative talents into BEFORE I DISAPPEAR: “An African American PhD student and a Japanese American college dropout forge an intimate connection during a single night of soul-baring in Bronzeville/Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.”
Kendra and Justin are cousins, and the process of creating BEFORE I DISAPPEAR began with a song Justin wrote: “I put out a song called 2499 on the day before my 25th birthday, and it was essentially about my identity and childhood, feeling lost and feeling like if I don’t find a balance of some sort I feel like I’m going to disappear.”
The song was deeply affecting for Kendra: “I was at a pivotal turning point in my life. I was 34 and I was becoming a mother for the first time. I think part of what really struck me about Justin’s song was his struggle with identity spoke to me personally. But it was also top of mind as I was starting to think about raising a child knowing that she was also mixed race.”
Their connection strengthened through creative collaboration, eventually leading to Kendra laying the groundwork for the script. As Justin explains: “Kendra wrote to me a little bit afterwards and just really enjoyed the song. And that sparked our relationship to begin again. It took a little bit to develop, but over some time we began to create a closer bond through this artistry. Maybe about a year or two later Kendra started talking to me about this idea that she had based off of this song that I had written a few years earlier.”
The process of developing the film was made on countless phone calls. “In terms of our collaboration, it was so beautifully organic,” Kendra said. “It just started with phone conversations that would be part catching up on family stuff, and then it would ebb into what we were working on personally and individually, and then it would go into this idea that we were starting to come up with together,” she said.
Kendra’s daughters, Rebel and Dre, (ages 5 and 3 at the time). The photo was taken in June 2020 while attending a “Tsuru for Solidarity” protest and vigil near the former site of Tanforan Racetrack, a World War II assembly center for Bay-area Japanese Americans. The purpose was to show support for and solidarity with immigrants and Black lives. Fun fact: Justin is Rebel’s godfather.
As Kendra explains, the development process connects directly to the style of the script. “I think this is a huge reason why the style of this particular script is so dialogue heavy and has such a back and forth. It is very representative of how the idea came to life,” she said.
While developing BEFORE I DISAPPEAR, Kendra and Justin sifted through their familial history, as Justin describes about the overarching theme of the project. “By knowing our history we can begin to know ourselves and that’s how we can begin to heal. It feels like that became the theme of the film but also for us because every time we talked we started diving into our family history,” she said.
The intentions of the script broadened and changed over time, as Kendra explains: “When we first started working on this our intention was to write something for our communities, for the communities that we come from and for the little kid in us that never saw ourselves on screen. Then the pandemic hit, and the Black Lives Matter Movement took center stage, and then also there was this huge increase in hate crimes against Asians in America. So suddenly the work we were doing broadened the impact that we wanted to consciously make.
“We really wrote it with a consciousness around a universal theme,” she said. “No matter our background, we all reach these phases of wanting to know more about who we come from, where we come from, about our history, especially when we’re reaching these milestone moments within our lives and we’re about to embark on that next phase.”
The landscape of Los Angeles is also key to the project, especially Little Tokyo. Communicating the importance of the history of that area is crucial to Kendra and Justin. “There is a three year period where during World War II the Japanese Americans were shipped out to camps,” Kendra explained. “The African American war laborers were then shoved into Little Tokyo as a segregated housing option. So for that three year time period, Little Tokyo was completely African American.
What is really interesting is that the African Americans didn’t instantly all disappear, there was this really rough time period of attempted integration and a lot of ups and downs. But that’s why we picked Little Tokyo because it not only is historically but symbolically this intersection of Hana and Isaiah’s backgrounds,” she said.
Alongside the complex content of the script, Kendra and Justin have a defined vision for the art style and pacing of BEFORE I DISAPPEAR. Justin, being an accomplished visual artist especially, has visualized the final product. “For me we are going to lean into a kind of 90s, saturated neon lights, music video-esque visuals, paired with a more verite approach to how the pacing and the shots are done. Leaning back into this idea of music videos for these big moments.
“As far as pacing goes I love the pacing of music videos. Music videos are the best way to show this arc of a story. There’s fast moments paired with moments that they slow down and you are allowed to sit and sink into a moment for a minute. Music is going to lean heavily into the film itself which I think will lean into the way that it’s edited and the pacing. But for me I’m really leaning into this over saturated, highly composed, not overly art department but it’s done. The production value is there and it feels immersive,” he said.
A young Kendra holds baby Justin
BEFORE I DISAPPEAR is one of the inaugural projects in Stowe Launch, which is Stowe’s advanced development program for top emerging screenwriters and filmmakers. We are happy that the experience of developing the film has encouraged Kendra and Justin’s creative journey. As Kendra explains: “What’s so amazing about Stowe and Bryce and the Davids, is that they came at the perfect time for both of us. They gently took a hold of our hands and they started to walk us forward, but to also push us into territory that was very uncomfortable for us, and that we didn’t think that we either deserved to be in or were experienced enough to be in or good enough to be in. They put us there and by doing so they made sure they held us accountable to the work, but they also showed us that we do belong in this space. That might seem like a really small thing, but it’s a huge thing for us in our lives coming from the backgrounds we come from.”
BEFORE I DISAPPEAR is a layered project, tied to Kendra and Justin’s individual, familial and cultural history, to the history of the United States, and above all the project has bloomed through their connection, epitomized by this exchange below:
Justin - “Our relationship has grown so much over the last ‘x’ amount of years that we’ve been working on this project, and I think in the last year we’ve come to really trust each other, and I think that comes with time.”
Kendra - “I was just thinking that! I was just going to say that! I was like, ‘Oh I need to tell him after Justin’s done talking that we trust each other!’” (laughs)
Robert Delany is an Academic Intern with Stowe Story Labs. He graduated in 2020 with an MA in cinema studies from NYU and was a Program Associate for the 2020 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, where he now conducts interviews for their “Filmmaker Spotlight Series”. Robert also writes for Split Tooth Media, an independent film and music publication based in Portland, Oregon. He is currently acting as a researcher on the film ASCO: WITHOUT PERMISSION, directed by Travis Gutierrez Senger and produced by North of Now. He was also an Office Assistant at Senger’s production company, Asa Nisi Masa Films, where he focused on the development of numerous projects. Robert graduated in 2018 with a BS in film and TV from Boston University’s School of Communication. Robert Delany was selected for this academic internship to focus on interviews and other writing for The Story Board, Stowe Story Labs’ bi-monthly newsletter. He will also assist in the establishment of a curated short film platform for Stowe Alumni.
