“Glimpse,” directed by Earl Paus
San Diego Short Film Festival
Genre: Experimental
Total Run Time 11:11

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How can you relate to someone else’s deeply personal work? Gabriel (Paus), a barista and musician, has a near-death experience, which leads to otherworldly
visitations from his ancestors and a re-evaluation of purpose that takes him right back to his coffee
shop.

That is a cursory plot synopsis that doesn’t come close to capturing the layers that I peeled back as I
voyeuristically entered Gabriel’s life. I learned a lot about him very quickly, and there was little to
initially relate to. His sexuality is not my sexuality. His choice of drugs is not my choice of drugs. His
ancestry is not my ancestry. His job is not my job. His talent is not my talent. And yet…

I have had a near-death experience. A couple, actually. So that provided the first bridge to this stranger’s
story. And one thing Paus absolutely nails about that experience is the immediate questioning of the
meaning of everything. There’s a montage in which Gabriel evaluates his emotional blind spots with his
shrink, contemplates his place in the capitalistic machine with his Uber driver, and then expresses his
existential angst with a silent customer at the coffee shop. It’s a standout sequence of simultaneous
comedy, dread and pathos.

My ancestors hail from a different Pacific island, about 3,000 miles away from Philippines. But I empathize with his realization of the wondrous improbability of their genetic legacy living here right now, in the United States, along with his ache to understand that legacy. What lesson are his ancestors trying to convey? Are they a source of comfort or shame? Is he a source of comfort or shame to them?

From there, relating to Gabriel got a lot easier. Mediocre sex? Yeah. Unfulfilling job? Yup. And as
challenging as it is to find oneself in someone else’s representation on screen, I appreciated having to
work for it a little.

“Glimpse” is highly stylized (it’s in the fantasy category, after all) in intentional and interesting ways,
with imagery that evokes Gabriel’s ancestry both literally and metaphorically while capturing the
fractured reality he’s experiencing from almost dying. The shots are composed with care and are highly varied, giving the film a flow that feels alternatively natural and unnatural but never self-indulgent – a trap that some deeply personal films can easily fall into.

Paus has mentioned that he’d like to turn this short into a feature-length film, and there’s more than
enough here to both work with and excel with.