Kristina Licare, class of 2011, experiences deja vu all the time. But while most people dismiss these moments as surreal, Licare finds truth.
Licare describes her experience as a "belief in the purity of each moment." For her, they are not tricks of the mind, but real and previously lived circumstances that are re-occurring.
Licare's experiences with deja vu led her to question her philosophy on life and, more specifically, time.
"There are moments that everybody has in their life where they look up and say, 'Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here?'" she said.
In her quest to answer these questions, Licare sought to understand a cyclical view of time as opposed to the widely believed linear view of time. The cinema major's passion and curiosity for the topic manifested itself in her senior film project based on a young girl experiencing repetitive deja vu-like moments. She dubs this realm of cyclical time, as well as her short film "The Loop."
"There's no way that other people can know how other people see the world," Licare said. "That's why there's art."
And that's exactly what this "mystic" did. Her film, "The Loop," is a conceptual piece based around time's cyclical nature and Licare's idea that "life is just a ride." It follows a girl in her day-to-day life as she experiences the eerie familiarity of deja vu. Licare uses layering and other editing affects in order to convey the simultaneous moments of cyclical time.
"Humans always find a way to un-see everything, especially death," she said.
For Licare, the fact that no one is promised tomorrow actually makes living the life she wants to live that much easier.
"People are so obsessed and afraid of the realities and illusions of life they forget to live," Licare said.
Licare is fighting this fear by pursuing her film career in Los Angeles, and she currently has an internship at Paramount Studios.
"There's really no point in listening to all the negativity of how hard it's going to be," she said. "There is no reason to wake up hesitant about going in for an interview. Now is all there is."
When Licare isn't busy on the Hollywood lot, she spends time working on her latest project, a TV pilot called "Perfectly Natural," about a girl who ventures to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting. Although some obvious parallels can be drawn between the main character's life and her own, Licare's work is by no means autobiographical.
But the pilot does integrate themes similar to those that inspired Licare's senior film project.
"I'm really trying to give the story an underlying theme revolving around the fact that you are neither your past or your future, you are in this moment, the only moment that truly exists," she said.
This is a principle Licare lives by in her daily life. She's not worried about making it to the top right away.
"The joy is truly in the journey," Licare said. "It isn't about the destination at all. If I haven't lived in between, I've slept through the really important stuff, and clearly, a writer can't do that."