STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Filmed between 2023 and 2024, Stream of Consciousness was born out of a need to give a voice to someone whose story
I felt needed to be heard.

Mark is a close friend of mine. Over time, he became family.
We’ve shared holidays, projects, photography and pieces of our lives.
For years, I had the chance to witness his journey up close: a young man who grew up surrounded by the streets and everything that comes with them, while at the same time being deeply connected to art, creativity and the need to express himself. 
This documentary was born from that.

I didn’t want to construct a story. I didn’t want to suggest answers, prepare the perfect questions or stage anything.

I simply switched on my Sony and asked him to talk. The camera was left alone. The audio was recorded directly through the camera.
Mark never looks into the lens, because the idea was to remove as much distance as possible between the person watching and the person telling the story. I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were sitting in the same living room, right in front of him, listening to a real conversation.

That’s where the title comes from: Stream of Consciousness.

A stream of thoughts, memories, experiences and contradictions that don’t need to be organised to be real.
Mark has lived through experiences that could have taken him in a completely different direction, but there is another side to his story, one that is often forgotten when we talk about people from certain backgrounds: the possibility of change.
Mark lives with sickle cell disease, a condition that can cause severe complications and damage vital organs; instead of allowing the illness to define his life, he decided to turn it into something.

Into art. Into awareness. Into hope.

He created I Bleed Different, a clothing brand through which he shares his message in hospitals and meets children living with the same condition, giving them pieces from the brand. At the same time, he is working on an audiobook about his experience of living with the disease.
That is what I have learnt from knowing Mark: not to judge people before you’ve listened to them, because behind a wrong decision, behind a life that may seem difficult to understand, there is a story we know nothing about, and very often, it isn’t the will to change that is missing.
It’s an example. 
Sometimes, all it takes to change direction is meeting the right person, sometimes, you just need to see that another path is possible.
This is Mark’s story, but it is also a small reflection on how little we really know about the people we choose to judge. 

Stream of Consciousness: Just what was inside him.