A Lonely Afternoon Trailer from Kyle Credo on Vimeo.
A Lonely Afternoon is a short film written and directed by Kyle Credo and produced by Farah Abdo, both 2014 grads of the Broadcasting – Radio, Television, Film & Digital Media program. Kyle explains, “The film is about a young Filipino boy that is looking for companionship during a house blessing at his home.” The inspiration behind the film has a lot to do with Kyle’s personal experiences growing up. Farah says, “Being second-generation Filipino, his family inspired him, and he just wanted to show a slice of what it’s like being Filipino-Canadian in Scarborough and growing up in the mix of the two cultures.” Farah took part in the film from the very beginning when Kyle began writing the early drafts. “I was helping review it, edit it, and give feedback. I always knew that I was going to be the producer and I was also the one to help apply for the grants, as it was fully funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Because it’s such a small movie and it’s our first short film, we had to take on a lot of roles.”
After finishing the final edit of the film in April, and applying to festivals that summer, Kyle and Farah eventually found out the film was selected by the Reel Asian International Film Festival. “We applied to many festivals, so we’re still hoping A Lonely Afternoon is going to get into a lot, but it just so happened that the Reel Asian International Festival was the first one. We’re very happy because it’s very Asian-centric, and so that is a great home for our movie. Plus, it’s in Toronto, so the premier gets to be in our home country, which is awesome. Over 95% of the crew were people of colour, and probably 80% of them were Filipino, so it was very exciting for the cast and crew to all be of Asian descent and to be in an Asian film festival.” Farah says.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the festival had to be carried out online, which made this the very first digital festival Kyle and Farah ever experienced. Farah says, “We had never even watched a digital festival before, so that was really interesting to actually be in one.” There were many positives about the festival, with some expected disappointments as well. Kyle explains, “The great part about that was we got to watch all of the movies at home, but the bad part was that we didn’t get to meet everyone face-to-face and you don’t get to have that premier in a theatre, which would have been really cool for all of the actors and actresses to be there to see it on the big screen. There was a programmer there who was also one of the people that chose our film, named Kelly, and she was the one that basically took care of us the whole time. She was super energetic and positive, and she made the whole transition to online bearable. The best part is that they tried their best to try and make it as interactive as possible. They had a Discord channel for all of the filmmakers so that we could all chat, so we made a lot of contacts through that, and they also kept sending us workshops and grant opportunities.” Farah says that they were also able to have a sit-down chat with Heads from the Union and Legal Services for free, which may have been special for this year of the festival.
It was important for Kyle to create a film that was both realistic and authentic, as he himself is much more interested in those kinds of stories. Additionally, creating something that highlighted BIPOC stories that haven’t always been told, was key to creating this film. Kyle says, “Even with A Lonely Afternoon that just came out, there are so many people that are not even Filipino, and who are people of colour, that were already able to relate to it.” He also mentions, “It’s important to pull from your own experiences because that’s what makes your subject matter more unique and original, and nobody knows that story except for you, so it’s just more relatable.” Farah recognizes the climate of this industry, as she says, “When I’m not producing, I’m working in television, and when he’s not directing, he’s working commercials. We’re in the industry, and we see that a lot of it is dominated by males and by Caucasians, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but if you want to encourage more people of colour to join, then there needs to be more stories that they can relate to.”
Reflecting back to their Broadcasting program, Farah says, “It’s a great program because you get to test all of the different departments and see what you want to do.” As part of the internship component of the program, she went to the Philippines, as she is very close to her heritage and had the feeling that possibly in the future, she’d want to work there or do something with Filipino culture. Farah has since achieved that with this film, and says, “I think it’s interesting that our first short film is A Lonely Afternoon and is based on Filipino culture because that’s our roots, and I felt like I always wanted to do that.”
Kyle stayed in Toronto to complete his internship where he was an office PA but says he always tried to get out on set as much as possible and made connections with a lot of the production managers and coordinators. Based on his time on campus, he says, “During my first year, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do, and in the second year, I was one of the people who got my short-films chosen. After that, every time I pitched a script, it would always get chosen, and I was able to direct my own script, so I was lucky enough to have people trust me in being the director for the shorts at Centennial.” Additionally, he says, “The best thing about Centennial is definitely the people we met. We’re still friends with the people that we were close with during that time, and they’re still in the businesses. We all talk, and if we need help with something, they still come on and are willing to help.”
Looking to the future, Kyle says he has many scripts and ideas that he wants to carry out, especially next year, so they are in the process of applying for grants. He says, “I have a feature film script that I want to make, which acts as a precursor to A Lonely Afternoon. The stories are not entirely the same, there’s no house party in the feature film, but it does deal with the same kind of subject environment and themes.” Farah also mentions ideas of possibly creating a film in Taiwan. She says, “We actually moved to Taiwan in 2015 until 2018, and we shot some short films there. We loved the country so much and fell in love with their culture as well, and we thought, should we do Canadians in Taiwan? So, we have a feature that’s fully written, and we’ve been searching for investors and grants. It would be a feature film in Taiwan with Canadian actors, and we’d bring some Canadian crew over as well.”
In the meantime, we can’t wait to see what festival A Lonely Afternoon will feature in next! Congratulations on this exciting achievement, Farah and Kyle!
By: Alexandra Few