A Sneak Peek at Harsimran Sandhu’s Short Film Pulp
Cinequest Film & Creative Festival is back again. And stronger than ever. From March 6th to 17th, over 200 films, celebrity Q&As, and prestigious after-parties will mark the 33rd year of Silicon Valley’s premiere film fest. On opening night, a steady stream of moviegoers flowed into the grand and gilded California Theatre to kick things off with the world premiere of gothic fantasy thriller The Island Between Tides. Quite a few actors, cinematographers, and directors flew in so they could walk the red carpet—after all, the festival’s films come from numerous States and 45 different countries—but we’ve got Bay Area talent in the lineup too.
If you only attend the festival’s feature-length screenings, you’ll miss a local gem tucked into the short film program. Pulp, a debut short directed by San Jose native Harsimran Sandhu, is a tale about the immigrant experience. Considering that 40.7% of San Jose’s residents were born outside the U.S. as of 2021, Director Sandhu’s film seems a fitting tribute to our diverse region in a multicultural festival.
Sandhu overcame quite a number of hurdles to bring his vision to the screen. In fact, it took a defeated moment while studying for a B.S. in business at San Diego State to first light the spark. “Junior year, I remember sitting in an accounting class learning about credits and debits, and I had this big existential crisis,” Sandhu recalls. Later that night, “I was on the floor, venting to my roommate. I was like, ‘Life is over. What am I doing?'” After some words of encouragement, Sandhu perked back up and was determined to make a film. “I just felt so compelled to make a capital ‘S’ Something,” he emphasizes. But there was a short window of time to realize that dream. Sandhu had until graduation to utilize his college’s film resources and connections.
So this aspiring director started walking into film classes. “I would talk to professors, and I was like, ‘I can’t enroll in this because I’m not in the major, but can I sit in on these classes and learn and observe?'” He admits that, at first, the imposter syndrome was rough. “I felt like such an ‘other,’ if I’m being honest,” he shares. “An outsider looking in.” But he stuck with it and started pouring late nights into scriptwriting.
With no prior screenwriting experience, Sandhu penned and discarded countless drafts for six months until one of his roommates confiscated his laptop and read his work. The script sheds light on children of immigrants and their experience—a story inspired by Sandhu’s own relationship with his parents, who moved to the States from Punjab, Northern India. “My roommate started crying,” Sandhu recalls. “She was like, ‘This is beautiful, you need to make this!'”
Pulp discusses how many immigrant parents might not know how to express love adequately through words but often show it through their actions. “I fell in love with the imagery of giving someone the bigger half of an orange,” Sandhu says as he discusses the film’s title and key symbol. “It’s a mother eating less so her daughter can eat more… It’s ‘I want to peel it for you. I want to do the work for you so you can reap the rewards.'”
The film also portrays the pull between finding a “responsible” job and following the siren’s song of a creative career—a divergence many children of immigrants must navigate. “You’re supposed to pay your parents back. You’re supposed to take care of them and make their sacrifices worth it—and there’s such a clash with the pursuit of your own dreams,” Sandhu reflects. “That’s something that I’ve personally struggled with: that balance.” Plenty of his peers face the same dilemma. “I’ve had so many late-night talks with my friends about ‘What can we do?’ And no one knows the answer,” Sandhu says. “We’re all figuring it out. There’s no blueprint.”
As Sandhu shared his dream for Pulp with his classmates, quite a few rallied around the project, ready to bring his story to life despite the cost. “I was shocked at the generosity of it all,” the filmmaker says. “A lot of them cited that they were doing it because of the story.” Sandhu then managed to score the Pursue Your Dreams grant by Ascent Funding. “It was amazing, but it was also very scary, because I just got a direct deposit of $10, 000!”
Everything was going swimmingly until it came to rent video equipment from the school. Because Sandhu wasn’t a film major, he wasn’t given access to it. Nothing a little creative problem solving and willpower couldn’t solve. “I’d talk to people in my class, and I’d be like, ‘Hey, just attach your name to the project, and say you’re making a movie so we can check out equipment under your name,'” Sandhu recollects.
After the film was complete, he hit another roadblock. The SDSU Film Festival rejected Sandhu’s entry on the grounds that he was a business major. “I was like, ‘Please, guys, please!'” So they made an exception. “And I ended up winning Best Director,” Sandhu says with an amazed shake of his head.
Sandhu’s success catapulted him into the film festival circuit and earned him an internship with the Emmy’s as well as acceptance into a South Asian writer’s room. He’s currently working on a feature about a mom searching for her son in the wake of the 1984 Sikh genocide. “If I can make someone feel less alone—if I can make a movie that feels like a hug—I would love to do that,” he says.
Showcasing his film at Cinequest is a special moment for Sandhu. He first attended this festival as a teen, seeking extra credit for one of his classes at Gunderson High School. “I was the only one from my class who went,” he recalls. Watching spirited shorts, then hearing directors and writers speak about their films left a long-lasting impression. “I felt so enamored,” he says. “It’s a full circle moment—because I’m on that stage now!”
Ready to make your own memories at Cinequest?
A few films to look forward to this year include The Trouble with Jessica (a comedy starring Rufus Sewell and Alan Tudyk), Ezra (a dramedy starring Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg and Rainn Wilson), Puddysticks (a dark comedy starring Jurassic World’s Mamoudou Athie) and Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox (a sci-fi staring Machete’s Danny Trejo).
Special events this year include an AI Town Hall about all things AI and creativity as well as Silent Cinema (1920s old Hollywood classics accompanied by a live organist).
Support Sandhu by watching the shorts program at 9:30AM on March 16th at the Hammer Theatre.
Like locking puzzle pieces, Scott and Shannon Guggenheim—or “Stannon” as they are fittingly known by their staff—are the producing entity and owners of 3Below, the new home of Guggenheim Entertainment since the closing of the Retro Dome, San Jose’s previous realm of movie and sing-along fun. At 3Below, expect top-quality surround sound as you view an indie film or enjoy a classic flick in the cozy Theater 2. Participate in a ComedySportz show or take an acting class in Theater 1. Sing along to The Rocky Horror Picture Show or see a play in Theater 3 for a family night out. No matter what you come for, your experience is curated by creators driven by the need to provide entertainment that promotes joy.
You used to be the Retro Dome in West San Jose. How is this downtown location treating you? SHANNON: The audience we’ve grown in Saratoga hasn’t really followed us down here. I don’t know if they just haven’t caught on that, there’s something family-friendly out here to do. Usually, we announce Sound of Music and sell out a thousand seats in a weekend. We’re really trying to explain that we have this lovely little bubble you can just pull into. It’s tricky being a movie theater. With other businesses—restaurants, salons—you see the hustle and bustle of activity through the front windows. When we’re busy, everybody’s in here. SCOTT: We’re a safe place, too. Here, we have validated parking. You can just park in our garage and walk downstairs; it’s lit, there’s security in the building, and afterward, you can walk right back out to your car.
How have you applied your artistic background to the challenges you face every day as a business? SHANNON: If there’s any testament to art’s importance in schools, it’s that when you learn anything relative to being a performer, you immediately have a skillset you can take with you your entire life. You can’t be in a show without multitasking: you need to be a good communicator, understand conflict resolution, and give-and-take. Being tenacious and not wanting to give up are the traits of a performer. Who but a performer will subject themselves to rejection after rejection?
One of our bread and butter concepts throughout the ‘90s was doing kids’ club programming for shopping centers. We had fashion shows with jeans that the kids in the audience decorated; we did Retail Star, a competition to see which storefront would be occupied by a new tenant.
That was all well and good, frankly, until 9/11 happened. As the climate changed in America relative to what your third place could be, people didn’t feel safe in those environments the way they did the day before. So marketing managers in shopping centers completely changed their focus. They weren’t hosting events or fun things for crowds anymore. All that money was reallocated to security. So we had to adapt really quickly.
SCOTT: For seven or eight years, we exclusively did the Christmas rollouts at Stanford and Bay Street in Emeryville, at Montgomery Village, and at Pier 39. So when you see elves or soldiers or bands performing or carolers out there, most of the time, it’s us doing that. SHANNON: There were definitely things you did because they paid the bills, and there were things you did for your artist’s soul. Very often our Christmas events were paying for the Hanukkah show we wrote. As that trend changed, we had to find other ways to survive. Our synagogue employed us to create a theatrical program for their school or synagogue. That lets us keep paying the bills while enjoying some aspect of our own selves.
Not everyone gets to start a theater company with their best friend and stay married for 30 years. Through all the co-writing and co-directing, marketing, and administrative work, how have you managed to keep the family together?SCOTT: We’ve been very lucky in that we found each other when we were young. Shannon and I met doing children’s theater in the late ’80s. We ran a children’s theater for nearly a decade, and our exit from that was producing Schoolhouse Rock Live. We have the same sensibility. We’re both really good event planners. That’s probably our biggest strength. SHANNON: For everything I’m not good at, Scott is. And vice versa. We’re very lucky in that way. And we know each other’s weaknesses, too. It’s possible that having Ally in our life was a big reason for that. SCOTT: Our second-born, Ally, has been in and out of a hospital her whole life. She’s 100 percent dependent on us. SHANNON: With Ally’s severe disabilities, what’s the alternative? We can’t just say never mind, I’m not going to be the adult today. The strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker. Whatever you have in your life that’s already strong it’s going to be crystallized as a result of having to get through it.
We’re here to create. It’s just some sort of knowledge that we’re here for a purpose. And if we have the opportunity in our lives to figure out what it is and go do it, well how lucky are we?
What do you want the South Bay to know about 3Below?SCOTT: If you want to come to experience a show and know the quality of entertainment will be a top bar, this is one thing I say because it’s true: both Shannon and I are directors and choreographers, and we find the best way to get the best performance out of our actors. My brother Stephen is able to find the means to get the best vocals from the performers as well. SHANNON: We love the idea of having creative control over everything, but we would love a couple of other people to share this with. People are moving away because they can’t afford to live here. It’s been hard to cast actors, fill slots behind cash registers, or find set builders. Every industry that supports what we’re creating seems to have ebbed off as far as an abundance of talent. We’re talking to other theaters, the opera, and symphony—and they agree; it’s just really lean out there. We’re all using the same wig mistress. Our designers are fantastic, but we’re afraid we’ll lose them.
If people don’t support the arts, they will go away. You can’t let the convenience of insular entertainment change you completely. No filmmaker ever said, “I can’t wait for you to see it on this little screen!” They want you to see it on a massive screen with great sound with other people. Technology makes what we do even better, but if you let it bleed you of any enjoyment found in other ways, those ways won’t exist.
Through all the turmoil we experience in our news, why are you rebuilding? When you’re done rebuilding, then what are you going to do? Just because we can get to the moon, what are we going to do when we get there?SCOTT: We create new programming to keep us going, but also to make sure we’re meeting our basic needs of building better people, creating a better world. We choose things that promote joy.
Like locking puzzle pieces, Scott and Shannon Guggenheim—or “Stannon” as their staff fittingly knows them—are the producing entity and owners of 3Below, the new home of Guggenheim Entertainment since the closing of the Retro Dome, San Jose’s previous realm of movie and sing-along fun. 3Below delivers top-quality surround sound as you view an indie film or enjoy a classic flick in the cozy Theater 2.
3Below is also the home of the ComedySportz show and provides acting classes, sing-along to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and theater productions. No matter what you come for, your experience is curated by creators driven by the need to provide entertainment that promotes joy. In our conversation, Shannon was sure about the journey to opening, the road they have been on through COV-19, and the spark of hope they feel as they can see the light at the end of the tunnel as they slow to reopen.
Shannon shares her own experiences through SIP and announces a new production series they are dreaming about called “San Jose Stories.” The series will consist of interviews with locals that are then developed into an improv interpretation.
Social Media: 3belowtheaters 3below if featured in issue 11.0 “Discover” 2019. ________________ This episode’s music is “Tang” by Chris Emond. Follow Chris on Spotify, http://bit.ly/ChrisEmond.
