Filmmaker & bastani bae Lara Sarkissian talks to us about the making of her latest video for Issue which is devoted to tea:

Bay Area rapper/producer, Issue, strays from the style of his father E-40 and brother Droop-E, and brings a very experimental, ambient and #based side to rap. When he approached me and my friends, Emily Wang and Mars Rosas, to direct the music video for “Mask on the Moon,” the anthem off Liquid Wisdom (released on Greedhead) where declares his love for ~tea~, we hopped onboard.

Tea is a theme in most of Issue’s lyrics, not as a metaphor, but for the literal goodness of chai. “I try to think of tea as wisdom,” Issue explains in his Noisey interview, – it’s true though!! From Asia, Africa to the Middle East and Caucasus regions, tea has historically been used as alternative medicine, meditation, ceremonies, and social spaces such as teahouses. As someone who immediately associates tea to my Iranian-Armenian family’s gatherings, chai rituals, and nana’s homemade remedies, I WAS REALLY EXCITED TO MAKE A VIDEO ABOUT TEA. Each time my family and their friends get together, my nana brings out chai before a meal and again after a meal, along with cardamom, ghand (sugar cubes) that you can keep between your teeth while drinking, or saffron infused nabaat (rock candy) which is also known to have healing properties for the stomach. (~fun fact: this rock candy is known in China as ‘bing tang’ and used in cuisines and traditional Chinese medicine).

TEA IS A DIPLOMAT. Beyond the foundational idea of tea bringing families and friends together, some have applied it to a larger scale of disputed regions. I recently learned about a tea brand established in the South Caucasus a few years ago (whether it was a success or not), that harvests tea leaves in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the disputed regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia; combines them together with a “Made in the Caucasus” logo on the box in hopes of creating a common ground and dialogue between the regions that have shared violence for decades. TEAPLOMACY? THE ROUND TABLES OF TEA? Around tea, my family’s stories, jokes and anecdotes suddenly pour out from around the table (and of course this will go on for several hours even while being escorted to the doorstep). This is my sense of what a ‘tea party’ is like and tried to take some elements from it to incorporate in the video. I brought out *my family’s* rug, *my nana’s* chai tea set and invited my close friends to the Berkeley Rose Garden.

After the video premiered on Spin, I was asked by a number of people “why aren’t there more brown people in it?!” I am really glad folks approached me with that, as these are questions that should be asked about the media we consume and be critical about who is being represented and in what spaces (also it’s 2014 get with it~). I realized that sometimes what you envision and hope doesn’t necessarily end up as the result. I envisioned more representation of folks in the video, however due to time constraints and circumstances, relied on immediate people around me who were available to help us finish the product, and we poured some tea out for those who couldn’t make it. I’m really happy with how it turned out, yet learned a lot from the experience and feedback, and am excited to incorporate that into future projects. ~#~hmu~#~

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