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Bonita
When you’re cut off from one world, the only thing to do is dive into another.
That was what filmmaking was to me: creating a world and diving in. Some documentarians want to reveal the world for what it is, show people a different side or a different angle. Not me. What do I know about the world? Only that I’m kept from it.
For me, when I started experimenting with a camera, it was about more than just making films. For me, it was about making a world I could explore. Not like the one I lived in, which had its beauty and its mystery—that was what I’d been told. But my parents wouldn’t let me explore this world. Too much of a risk. So I created other worlds. I made films. And in my films, I wasn’t afraid of taking risks. In my films, I cast light on my subject, whereas, in this world, the light that was cast could kill me, literally.
I wasn’t being hyperbolic; sunlight could kill me. It’s called solar urticaria. My immune system treats UV rays as if they are deadly poison. That was why people called me Vampire Chick. Either that or because I was a blood-sucking bitch. Either way, Vampire Chick had a nice ring to it, so I didn’t mind.
I thought it would even make a good name for a production company once my film career took off. “Another blockbuster success from Vampire Chick Productions.” or “Universal Pictures offers two hundred million dollars to buy Vampire Chick Productions, but CEO Bonita Rose Morales turns them down.” Yeah, I’d say that has a pretty good ring to it, indeed.
The first film I made was about skateboarding. Not exactly my preferred choice in subjects. But my options were limited. Guillermo and Noah were going through a skateboarding phase—that would be my brother and his best friend—and they were more than happy to volunteer as actors. Young teenagers with a thirst for speed, testing the limits, exploring the threshold for risk and for pain: I focused more on their wipeouts, and they gave me plenty of material to work with!
I shot the entire film from my bedroom window while they took turns failing at skateboarding stunts on the street below. Despite the bumps and the bruises they had sustained, I tried to capture something fun and kinetic: youthful energy, throwing caution to the wind. But because of my sun allergy, I didn’t get close to the action. I shot the whole thing from within my protective cocoon. What a hypocrite.
It wasn’t all bad, though. I learned a lot about camera angles, exposure, shutter speeds, and especially editing. But when I was cutting the footage into something vaguely watchable, it was impossible to cut out the distance between my subject and me. That was why the film didn’t work. No one wants to see distance. Distance sucks.
That was the biggest lesson I learned from that experience. And it was what gave me the inspiration for my next project: my first “real” project, a fifteen-minute short about my living with a potentially deadly allergy called solar urticaria. How was that for reducing the distance? I didn’t show bumps and bruises but swelling and rashes. Can’t get more up close and personal than that.
Because of my condition, people would ask me if I hated the sun, if I hated the color yellow. I supposed the psychological effects of the rare allergy were what interested people the most. I wouldn’t say, honestly, that I hated the sun or the color yellow or summer. I definitely feared the sun; I knew my body couldn’t handle it. But I didn’t hate it.
They say there’s a fine line between love and hate. There’s no fine line between love and fear, though, is there? Those were the kinds of questions I asked in my documentary, trying to reconcile my fear of the sun with the sense of awe it inspired in me and the joy it brought to others. The sun was a bit of an obsession of mine. Perhaps I had a bit of a morbid streak. My friends would suggest I definitely had a death wish.
That wasn’t true. I just had a wish to make decisions for myself. If those decisions happened to put me in mortal danger, well, that was purely coincidental.
Exposure to the sun put me in mortal danger. And because of that, my parents, friends, and doctors were always making decisions for me. So it was safe to say I had a love-hate, infuriatingly frustrating relationship with the sun. But it was nothing personal.
In fact, the next project I started after finishing the short on solar urticaria was a project on solar energy. At least it started off about solar energy. Then, after doing some research, I became fascinated with the solar energy baroness, Sasha Snow.
