{"id":24023,"date":"2019-06-20T18:21:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24023"},"modified":"2019-06-20T18:21:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:21:31","slug":"a-taste-of-home-a-love-letter-to-family-nets-prize-for-budding-filmmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/a-taste-of-home-a-love-letter-to-family-nets-prize-for-budding-filmmaker\/","title":{"rendered":"A taste of home, a love letter to family nets prize for budding filmmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A kitchen is often at the heart of home and family. It\u2019s\na place where people create, share ideas, pass down time-honoured traditions\nand come together to share a meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s Jaiden Pugar grew up watching his grandmother,\nVera, making cookies. When he came to her house as a child, there was always a\nfresh batch waiting for him. When Vera came to visit, another fresh batch was\nin the offing. In Jaiden\u2019s mind, those crescent-shaped vanillekipferl,\nknown within the family as \u201cU Cookies\u201d are inextricably linked with his\ngrandmother and his sense of family, and now he\u2019s shining a light on these\nlinks through film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaiden was joined by Vera at\nthe Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre on Wednesday afternoon to show his resulting short\nfilm and receive a cheque for $1,000 \u2013 the first prize in Heart to Home Meals\u2019\n\u201cShow A Little Heart\u201d video competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in its second year, Heart\nto Home Meals\u2019 video competition aims to highlight the benefit of\nintergenerational relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The competition first hit\nJaiden\u2019s radar last year as a film student at York University, but he had to\nput his idea on the backburner for a few months. Yet he never wavered on his\nidea: he had to tell the story of Vera \u2013 whom he calls Baka \u2013 and the light and\nsweet treats that have satisfied the hunger pangs of three generations of his\nfamily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBaka and I go way back,\u201d\nsaid Jaiden in his video narration. \u201cWe have been friends forever. We have\nalways been a very close family. I would make countless visits to Baka\u2019s and on\neach and every visit, I knew I could count on her to make a fresh batch of\nthose sweet, soft U cookies. Have you ever had a certain food associate so\nstrongly with a place? When I take a long and hard look back at those times, I\ncan almost smell them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs delicious as they are,\nthese cookies are very special to me for more than just the taste. Baka came\nfrom a very small village in Croatia and continues to live the very traditional\nlifestyle that she was brought up in. As time went on, it became more difficult\nto talk to Baka and relate with her. As the speed and intensity of my life\nincreased, Baka\u2019s drastically slowed down. I feel the U cookies she makes are\nnot only a connection to memories of the past, but as a symbol of the\nrelationship I have with her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video, just shy of five\nminutes in length, packs in a lot of story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaiden shares snippets of\nVera\u2019s relationship with her late husband, Jaiden\u2019s grandfather. He also\nprovides insight into Vera\u2019s life now, living with her daughter Lillian and\ncreating new memories in the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen [my grandfather] passed\naway from lung cancer, it really took a toll on everyone, especially Baka,\u201d\nJaiden shares. \u201cVisiting had become a lot less frequent in recent years, but\nBaka and I need to see each other now more than ever. The memories of time\nspent with loved ones are stored and cherished deep inside our hearts; but the\ntime we have to create them is limited more and more each day. As busy as my\nlife is, the last thing I would want to do is put someone or something over\nfamily. She said that she would always be there for me. Don\u2019t worry, Baka, I\nwill always be there for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the presentation by\nHeart to Home Meals, Jaiden, 20, shared with The Auroran, that he was\ninterested in taking up the film competition\u2019s challenge of capturing \u201ca little\nmoment and process that is going on, something that was nostalgic and sweet \u2013\nand \u2018sweet\u2019 is those cookies and how they are made. I could talk things over the\nmaking of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis wasn\u2019t scripted, but we\nchatted a lot and I got footage of [Vera and Lillian] talking,\u201d he said. \u201cThen,\nI had to ask myself how I can put this together to fully make a story? Then, I\nhad to go deep within my memories to find the right stuff and what worked. I\nwant people [who see the film to see] that family is really important and\ncookies can be used as a symbol of the closeness of a relationship. As time\nwent on and my life became busier, we\u2019d visit each other a bit less. She wasn\u2019t\nable to make them as much and it was just kind of a reminder that even if\nthings are in the way you always have to have a special priority for family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaiden will put his $1,000\nprize cheque towards another short film, one he describes as a \u201cbit of a horror\nromance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the film streamed at the\nSeniors\u2019 Centre, a smile rarely left Vera\u2019s face. After one Centre member asked\nher to share the recipe for U Cookies, she said participating in the video was \u201cvery\nemotional.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt means the world to me,\u201d\nshe said. \u201cHe\u2019s a beautiful grandson.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To view the film, visit youtube.com\/watch?v=icyQ_A92S0Y.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A kitchen is often at the heart of home and family. It\u2019s a place where people create, share ideas, pass down time-honoured traditions and come together to share a meal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-20-11.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6ft","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 11:22:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}