Short & Sweet: “When You Left Me on That Boulevard”

Austin filmmaker Kayla Abuda Galang brings her Sundance-winning short film home

By Dex Wesley Parra, Fri., March 10, 2023

"When You Left Me on That Boulevard" (Photo by Rajinee Buquing)

Welcome to "Short and Sweet," our look at short films playing at SXSW. Every day during the festival, we'll focus on a different film and filmmaker, kicking off with Kayla Abuda Galang. An Audience Award winner at SXSW 2021 for her last short, "Learning Tagalog With Kayla," the writer, director, producer, and editor now brings home her Sundance 2023 Short Film Grand Jury Prize winner, "When You Left Me on That Boulevard."

Austin Chronicle: Ah, the nostalgia! Your latest short serves up mid-2000s hairdos, technology, and slang. How much of that detail did you have to research, and how much was drawn exclusively from your own memory?

Kayla Abuda Galang: I'd say there was very little research and much more drawing from memory just because the Aughts are very much etched into my heart and my soul and my brain. So I guess it was really just initially digging up the artifacts like yearbooks, love letters, old schoolwork, favorite songs, and the like, and feeling what those things emotionally invoked, and leading with that. You know, when I think about flip phones, I think about long nights spent on the phone with friends and maybe-boyfriends, and when I think about the choppy hair, I think about how often we were trying as teenagers to establish autonomy through rebellious self-expression. These things came naturally in the writing and development process, so yeah, lots of drawing from emotional memory.

AC: Music can be heard in the background of most scenes here. What's your relationship to music, and on that note, what's your go-to karaoke track?

KAG: I obviously love music, but I actually have a very private relationship with music. Mostly because I'm afraid to admit that I'm oftentimes listening to the same rotation of five songs. But right now I'm on a big hardcore and post-punk kick with a tinge of Japanese instrumental pop because I'm moving through a lot of feelings these days! As for my go-to karaoke track, I think "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a classic. But I've also been very tickled singing "Photograph" by Nickelback because that's a weird and ironic crowd-pleaser.

AC: How has your Sundance win impacted you, especially as you take this short to SXSW?

KAG: Because the award was such a big and random surprise to the team and me, it's still something that I'm very much processing and moving through the impact of. It's definitely given a lot more visibility and criticism to my work, and for an early-career filmmaker, that's pretty nerve-racking! But I think in moving through all the chaos, I've been staying as grounded and open and curious as I can as I navigate the path forward and, I guess, start to level up my filmmaking instincts for the opportunities coming my way. But thankfully SXSW is my home turf. I'm very familiar with it and I mostly see it as just a really fun and wild time that seizes the city I live in. And so I'm approaching it like that and I'm really excited to watch hella movies and see hella music and hang out with some friends during spring break.