Director’s statement

From a very young age, I knew my grandmother had a special connection to playing piano and music. She’s discuss my piano playing with me and I was always eager to show her a new piece I learned from my piano lessons. Around the time that I really started developing a love for music, my grandma moved two blocks away from my house. Brilliant! I was excited to play with her, practice with her, and hear her play. However, she never seemed to practice anything, despite living alone and without a job. Even during Covid isolation she didn’t practice. The contradiction was stark and it peaked my interest for a film when I started college. The idea fizzled around in my head but never came to fruition until one day in January 2023, a year before “It’s There For You” was shot. I was sitting in my grandma’s living room, asking her to play a Chopin nocturne she said she liked, when she pushed back on the idea, saying that it was too difficult for her and that she couldn’t play it well. She reluctantly played it but she did so perfectly. So perfectly in fact, that I shazamed her playing the piece and someone else’s recording popped up. This was my lightbulb moment. That this exact moment could be the subject of the film I would make—the reluctance to play a piece of music (perhaps because for her music should only be played perfectly), but doing so anyway in a masterful way. So while that scene was slightly pre-planned, what wasn’t planned was the final scene. That stunning shift in attitude towards practicing, giving the name to the film and completing the arc of our protagonist. I’m a writer and I always make sure to prioritize writing a good ending yet I know there’s no way I could’ve written that ending scene better myself. To me it incapsulates everything about her lifelong journey and where it could potentially go, even at 88.