By Kate Mathews.

THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND is a film on how love lingers past its expiration date. It is an exploration into the perseverance of love beyond the bounds of a relationship: The items that remind you of fond memories once shared with someone close, and the care that lingers even when you no longer belong to one another. The space you hold for someone, whether that be a physical home or the abstract corner of your heart, stays unfilled in wake of their absence. Despite the conflict of the end, and the pain that separation brings, they’ll still think of the other when their birthday passes. They’ll still skip buying the foods the other was allergic to. They’ll turn to no one at all when they hear of news they used to celebrate together.

This was my first ever script I’d completed – and, at its creation, it was only two pages long! Despite its brief burst of life, it stuck with me for a while. It followed me until I relented and decided to flesh the concept out a little more. I have never been through a breakup like the one detailed in THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND. Despite this, like everyone else, I have lost good friends. Fought with family. Drifted apart from people I thought, at one time, would be permanent fixtures of my life. That struggle of coming together and pulling apart is universal. And sometimes, the breakups where you hold no anger for the other are the most painful. There is no bitterness to shield you from the line pulled taut between the two of you. You can only miss them and do nothing.

As a queer woman, it was important to me that I was able to see Maya and Rowan’s love come to life. To see them rely on each other unreservedly for the time that it lasted – to unapologetically hold the other. In a time of growing social unrest and intolerance in the United States, it was important to me that we be courageous, and continue to be loud in the wake of social stigmas fighting to drown us out. LGBTQ+ stories will always exist, whether we tell them or not. But if you’re asking me… I would rather we continue to tell them. 

The entire story happens in only one location – at Rowan’s apartment – and in my mind, that was what made it interesting to film! I wanted to see how much we could change and alter the space to fit with that very moment in Maya and Rowan’s lives. In that way, the apartment and how it morphs comes to represent the way Maya and Rowan’s own relationship changes. Finding ways to convey the passage of time and make emotions distinct using gaffing, as well as production design, was a great challenge. 

THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND was initially supposed to film during the second weekend of Winter Quarter. Production weekend, however, hit a slight snag – the wildfires in the Palisades. Over the course of that week, classes were cancelled, and students scattered to the wind as smoke enveloped Westwood. As it was, production had no chance of happening as intended. So, we had to pivot. We had to reschedule the entire shoot a mere week before it was supposed to happen. It was nerve-wracking. How many core crew and cast members could we lose on such a short notice change? 

By some sort of miracle, most crew members were able to make the change. Everyone was understanding and determined and committed. Everyone in DKA rallied to make the change happen – to make the film happen. To this day, I can’t describe how grateful and relieved I felt at that moment – to have such a tight-knit community, who stuck out the unexpected roadbumps and worked together to make sure THINGS YOU LEAVE BEHIND didn’t fall victim to its own name. It speaks to a kind of resilience that exists in the creatives here at DKA. It makes me admire everyone that much more. This short was my directorial debut – and my amazing DKA crew made that “first” all the more special. Quick shot-list meetings after rush voting, zoom call rehearsals where we were laughing because someone’s cameras kept freezing on unfortunate facial expressions, and the overuse of outdated internet references in between takes – I will look back on the process of making this short very fondly. And, like in the film, I know I’ll carry the people who made it with me for a long time to come.