What you do need? Clarity on your idea, momentum to keep going, and the guts to just start.

Before Ex Machina, before Her, and even before The Matrix there was ...

As an indie filmmaker, I’ve learned that the most powerful stories often live in the margins, under the radar so to speak, in alleys, in pauses, in the spaces between destinations. This street, tucked between two neighborhoods in Tianjin, was one of those places. It had no name, at least none posted, but it had a pulse. Students, workers, elderly, and children passed through it daily. Shops opened and closed. Vegetable gardens became restaurants. Trash heaps grew like geological layers of discarded decisions. And through it all, the street remained, changing, yet constant.

As a family relatively new to minimalism, we've been at it for about a year so far, my wife and I now value simplicity, sustainability, and intentional living. Yet when it came to our adult daughter’s unconventional lifestyle, we found ourselves quietly concerned. Ok, worried.

What’s changed since 2008, when I first wrote an article on this topic? A whole hell of a lot—but the soul of microcinema still flickers, even as the movie theatre itself teeters on the edge of cultural obsolescence.

His suggestion came from someone who’d never seriously attempted filmmaking at the time, though we both grew up in middle-class families with 8mm or Super 8mm cameras that were routinely whipped out for birthdays and holidays. As teens, and young adults we repurposed them for more creative pursuits.

Fabulous Agora – China Moments in Monochrome is the result: a curated collection of 150 black-and-white photographs that reflect my time living and working in China. These images capture fleeting moments, architectural textures, and the quiet poetry of everyday life — all rendered in monochrome to emphasize emotion over spectacle.

My dad was a lifelong Star Trek fan. As a kid in the ’60s, I shared his fascination with space exploration — dreaming of spaceports, Mars missions, and the future beyond Earth. Every week, we’d gather around our black-and-white RCA TV to watch Captain Kirk’s adventures, much to my mother’s dismay.