DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
"We’ve Traded Presence for Digital Storage"
When I was a teenager, I kept a long piece of paper - folded like a paper snake - covered with all the phone numbers of my family and friends. Every night in bed, I would look up at the ceiling and memorize them line by line. And I did.
When my best friend and I wanted a private chat, my father - an electrical design engineer - built us a 15-ft cable. That cable allowed my two sisters and me to walk away from the rotary base (where you still had to stick your finger into each number hole to dial) and carry the phone into our bedroom.
That was technology and communication in my youth.
Today, I don't need to memorize phone numbers. Almost no one does. Everything lives in digital memory. I just click on it once. Modern gadgets remove the manual effort, saving time for other things - which is wonderful. But at the same time, as we outsource our memory to devices, we risk erasing what we hold in our hearts and minds.
I also vividly remember my dad rolling down a white screen in our living room, lifting us onto chairs, and projecting old black-and-white slide films from his camera. It felt like a magic theatre created just for us. Our parents had physical photo albums from their travels. There weren't many photos, but we cherished every single one. Listening to music meant holding LPs, cassettes, and CDs; watching films meant loading VHS tapes.
Back then, I promised myself that when I had children, I would take thousands of pictures. And I did - until one day my own kids looked at me and said, "Why are you taking so many pictures? Stop it!"
I paused for a moment, then continued taking pictures more thoughtfully. I realized that in our rush to record, capture, and post everything, we stopped being present. Today, people go to live concerts and watch the entire show through a glowing 6-inch screen, recording content for social media instead of simply listening. We have consolidated physical records into one device, but in doing so, we've traded presence for digital storage.
Preserving memory is vital, but living the moment and being genuinely present matters most.
Why the TENSION film & LONGING educational platform now? Because TENSION is about bringing back that deep, human presence - the acoustic, physical, and emotional memory of how we connect across time, distance, and civilization without hiding behind screens. And LONGING preserves this memory in its extended form to safeguard our global cultural heritage.
It’s time to preserve what connects us as human beings in our hearts, not just in our phone storage.
🎵 TENSION - A Musical Journey of LighT and SilencE Through Time (Feature Film).
🌐 LONGING - Legacy Of Nations Through Global Interactive Networked Gmusic (Digital EdTech Platform for schools, universities, conservatories, museums, and cultural institutions).
P.S.: Yes, it’s me with my mom in the photo! 😊
Zuzana Ben Lassoued Balazshazyova
#TENSIONfilm #LONGING #Storytelling #Cinema #HumanConnection #DigitalAge #Musicology #Leadership #Filmmaking #DirectorLife
