Spotlight: Justin Kaminuma on the ‘Moments in Between’
IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS — We’ve all said it before. The moments left drifting between. The moments left unsaid, untouched. Memories. We’ve spoken of them, but Justin Kaminuma captured them. His two-minute short film Moments in Between is a capsule of emotion. A compilation of clips stunningly captured and taken primarily during 2021, Kaminuma reveals themes of nature and humanity. His non-narrative short film manages to create sensations of nostalgia and longing — indescribable feelings that ripple through your body like Kaminuma’s shots of skipping rocks on water. His unspoken story is only highlighted by the raw sounds of rain falling, waves crashing, water running, plants rustling, and the ambient noises of people on the subway or walking down a path. The only other sound present is that of the chosen soundtrack by Duster, titled “Stars Will Fall”: a gentle slowcore song that suits the film perfectly.
The 21-year-old artist is a senior at Emory University, born and raised in the suburbs of Massachusetts, near Boston. As he wraps up his time at Emory, his next path is a little less certain — a source of anxiety for the young filmmaker; a feeling which carried a lot of weight during his filming of Moments in Between.
Although a film studies major, Kaminuma is practically self-taught when it comes to film production. “I feel like I've learned everything through YouTube and my Internet friends, and just messing around,” he explains. “I also used to make Call of Duty montages, and that's how I learned how to edit.”
But what started with Call of Duty montages has resulted in Kaminuma shooting music videos on top of his personal projects. Some of his credits include directing two of Clubhouse’s singles, cinematography for Montell Fish, and an animated project for dj poolboi. “I've always wished I could make music,” he says. “This is the closest I can get to it. So that's why I do them.”
The Internet didn’t just help him learn how to edit, though. It was also one of his inspirations to become a filmmaker — specifically YouTuber Tim Kellner. Kaminuma described Kellner’s films as similar to his in that they aren’t necessarily narrative — more mood pieces. Kellner based his films on his traveling experiences, which he turned into short films. “I was never a good writer or storyteller, but I always wanted to make videos; I wanted to make films,” Kaminuma says. “So when I saw his videos, I was like, ‘This is something I can do.’ That inspired me to get a camera and just pick it up and learn everything. And ever since then, I've started making my own stuff.”
Which is how Moments in Between came to be. Kaminuma began filming by simply picking up his camera. “When you record something, you turn it into an object where, it's this thing now — you have this footage of this place, and it's kind of eternalized, I guess,” he describes. “So I just like to record everything. The whole process of this was recontextualizing moments that I never really thought had meaning until I put them into a cohesive thing.”
This in turn helped Kaminuma calm his anxieties about growing up. “Right now, I'm going through this existential crisis of like, ‘Oh shit, I'm graduating soon, I gotta get a job, I gotta move out and do all these things, and I feel a lot of anxiety about that,” he explains. But the process of going through his harddrives and reviewing lost footage unlocked something for Kaminuma. It was a reminder of memories, of taking a moment to remember; to slow down. “This is kind of like therapy for me — just going through all my old footage and putting it together.”
The meditative properties of Kaminuma’s films are something he hoped he captured well enough for others to feel — not just him. And he did. One of his favorite compliments on the film was by a Reddit user who commented on his video. “In essence, the film made them feel a feeling that they've been searching for,” Kaminuma says. “But they couldn't place a word or they couldn't place a term for it.” This meant a lot to the filmmaker — to create something that gave an indescribable sensation to someone else. “I think that's something I've always wanted to evoke.”
However, that’s not the only thing Kaminuma hopes viewers take away from the film. “I want people to see this as a reflection of me; who I really am,” Kaminuma says. Self-described as more secretive and introverted, he recognizes that his films are where he gets to take the mask off and be more vulnerable. “Because I feel like, when people watch these videos, they're really seeing this version of me that is as real as I can make it of myself, if that makes sense. And as long as I do that, I think I'm happy with what I make.”
Despite anxieties over the future, Kaminuma has some idea of where he sees himself — perhaps in New York City. But no matter where Kaminuma is, he will still be working on his art. “I made this project in a separate composition in the project file of a bigger project that I'm working on right now,” he explains. “Which is an animated one with a lot of rotoscoping and a lot of Super 8 footage. It's completely different, but also says the same things in this film. And you'll see that soon, in a few months.”
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