SOP Sample for MS Film in US | Fresher Creative Arts

Statement of Purpose

Name: [NAME] Program: MFA Graduate Film

I have often felt that I live in a world of imagination and reality at the very same time that raised an urge in me to tell my own stories. From listening to the tales of fantasy to being a part of a local theatre group, breathing life into the words, I was immersed in a world of imagination and creation of a mise-en-scène.

But as soon as adulthood knocked on my door, I realized the world was changing steadily; I lost my grandmother, who had once lovingly introduced me to this very world. When I inquired about her narratives of fantasy that made me dream, I found her world floating in the air of fiction and reality. But her stories revolved around a similar theme—something whose significance became more apparent to me over time with my personal experiences and exposure to art. I was lost between the ever-changing present and the past that only existed in my memories—fear of losing everything I had in the hands of change, like tears in the rain. I wanted to pause some moments in between, but time had its power over me in reality.

Later on, when I went to college to pursue social work for my graduate studies, I continued to tell stories as an active member of the college dramatics. And after some time, through community gatherings, I got oriented to the world of movies, the kind of movies that I had never seen. The Italian neo-realist films ingrained in me the relevant stories of the ordinary through their narratives. The French New Wave and Soviet cinema showed me how crucial cinematic language is to nurture individual expression. The world of movies was gradually absorbing me. As a social work trainee, I had to monitor and work with these characters in real life with my professional skills, preaching to show them how to end their problems created by their material reality. While working and traveling around the city, I saw Antoine trying to escape from a shelter home setting, a Ricci rotting in custody for a petty act of thievery, and a Dominic singing the tune of unity in the middle of the street.

Just like a flâneur, I was observing every bit of it, trying to find a part of me. I saw art imitating life in front of me, portraying everyday lives, seeking to survive in this world of material conflicts. I wanted to express myself with a medium that can give the essence of the very existence of life, an art that's capable of imitating life, elating us to the world in which we live. I could find nothing more surreal than cinema, which can reflect life in its most tangible form recreating a world of physicality. There is no other expression that is more dynamic than the audio-visual experience. I knew this was the medium through which I wanted to speak. However, in all such miseries, there was one thing that made them live, something my grandmother wanted to convey to me with her stories, which perhaps I can better explain through the words of [NAME]: "To live without hope is to cease to live." These brief experiences in life shaped me as a person and artist who knew that now he had a voice to speak.

Along with these experiences, [NAME] and [NAME]'s literary works have heavily inspired me. The stories like "Difficult People," "The Bet," "About Love," "White Nights," "Crime and Punishment," and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" had lasting effects on me. As I saw the respective interpretation of "Crime and Punishment" in "The Pickpocket" by [NAME] and "Whispering Pages" by [NAME], I realized what [NAME] meant when he had said: "A book read by a thousand other people is a thousand different stories."

Whenever I got caught while observing someone, it reminded me of [NAME]'s language of intimacy. The monsoon wind reminded me of [NAME]'s poetics of montage, and in times of despair, I took refuge in [NAME]'s language of spirituality. I want to preserve their cinematic vision as an amalgamation of influences to help me in my quest to tell stories through the medium of movies.

Post-college, I have tried to deal with the world of dreams in a documentary based on the places where I grew up as a child, shifting time and space like we do in our subconscious mind. Besides this, I tried my bit to create a narrative that revolves around the choice between death and grief. And to carry on this process of making films, I want to pursue this program for my higher studies.

My purpose as a filmmaker is to bridge the gap between our spirit and the nature we live in, to tell culturally-rooted stories that can unite the world with the power of universality. Narratives that connect us as a being, and like poetry, I believe, the art of cinema breathes for those who need it. I want to tell such stories with my very own distinctive language that I am still exploring.

The life of an ordinary person is the most ambitious setting for me. The people who roam around the city, oscillating between doing their duties and living a life with temporal moments of epiphany. As a filmmaker, I want to express my perception of truth through my experiences over time and explore these spiritual crises, the struggle between conscience and the inner being. I want to preserve my truth in time, capturing the actions in the moments of extremity where the duality of human nature confronts itself, choosing between the ideals that we try to preach and what our inner being wants us to be; to liberate the soul with hope from the dilemma of to be or not to be. These are the most important crux of the stories that I want to tell as an artist. In search of sculpting a human experience, I want to apply in this specific program to master this craft of directing and writing, serving the art of cinema with a world of my own, exploring the language over time to express my stories.

[UNIVERSITY] has always given a stage and nurtured distinctive voices. Being an individual who wants to tell personal stories of relativity while experimenting with different languages of cinema, [UNIVERSITY] is the best place for me to get polished and empowered as a filmmaker in the coming days. As a wanderer, I seek to relate with people and life to find a part of me, and New York being the epicenter of cultural diversity and discourse, would be the best place for me to interact with people from different cultures and know their bit of it so that I can tell universal stories that can unite and liberate us with our similarities and free us from cultural boundaries, beyond borders, race, and limits.

As I sincerely believe, "What are we but animals of sensations, seeking to find ourselves in each other, breathing the air of hope to create harmony between us and the world we live in."

With an outstanding faculty of teachers and a list of alumni who themselves have created their own style of filmmaking, I think [UNIVERSITY] will shape my cinematic world and nourish my language of cinema with skills and knowledge of constructing profound narratives and technical abilities to tell the stories about the freedom of the unfree world so that the very existence of my stories questions the reality we live in.