Reflection

Reflection

This project is a short film with a mix between stop motion and digital animation. It talks about the effects of climate change in El Salvador, which is the country where I was born. My inspiration was in two parts. I was first inspired by my dad's stories about how as a child he had to put a winter coat on to go to school because of the low temperatures that my country had. That was 37 years ago and there have been big changes in the climate since then. The second layer of my inspiration is that I am originally from El Salvador and I moved to Arkansas in the USA a little less than two years ago. I have been learning English in my school here and I have been learning many other things like science, history, and art as well. One day, I noticed that both my home flag and the flag of the USA have blue in them. I researched the meaning of the blue and learned that for El Salvador, the two blue stripes stand for the sky and for the ocean. For the blue of the American flag, it represents vigilance, perseverance, and justice. These things combined together in my mind as the perfect combination for talking about how climate change affects the two parts and two places of my own story. It is here that I found my title for my video: Azul Por Azul, or Blue for Blue. By using vigilance, and perseverance to fight for climate justice, we can fight to restore the blues of our sky and oceans. Making this short film made me realize that as society we need to change our habits so that we can save our planet for future generations. I don’t want my children or grandchildren to have to deal with a world full of contamination and other climate change problems like those in this video which were caused by our generation and past generations. People often see and feel the negative side effects of climate change but not the causes. This video, and the additional similar ones I want to make with research and information specific to individual countries representing the heritage of our local population, will help to show how these things come to be, how they impact our homelands, and what we can do to prevent and reverse them. No one can do it all, but we can all do something. By taking action here in Arkansas, as well as in the places where we come from, we can take steps as individuals and also work together as a local and global community to reverse the climate clock.