About the film
It was around 2017 when I came across a video on YouTube by Dr Ian Stevenson. I had never heard of his name before, however I had become more familiar with the idea of reincarnation after watching a movie the weekend before. It was a fiction film called I Origins in which the main character loses his wife and tries to find her reincarnated self by meeting a child with the same iris pattern as hers.
I watched the trailer again on YouTube since the movie and the algorithm must have figured that I would be interested in watching Scientific Reincarnation Evidence by Dr Ian Stevenson as well.
At first I wasn’t sure if I could sit it through until I read the description of the video.
Some children can remember exact & verifiable details of their prior life they never could have come to know in their current child life. These details can be objectively and independently confirmed. Remarkably & quite biologically enigmatic: Some of them have birth marks and birth defects at very same locations as the lethal injury causing their often abrupt and violent past life death
Until this video, I had always believed that the search for proof in spiritual believes was rather wishful thinking. But this time it was different because it was personal.
I was born in my grandparents’ house without any complications except from a broken collarbone. It wasn’t until my red newborn skin cleared up that the birthmark on my cheek started to show. At first there was mostly fear surrounding it until the doctor confirmed that it was simply a pigmentation spot. I was always encouraged by my parents to accept them. Yes, they made my face different. Some will see the spots before they see me. Some might find them ugly and yes, some might tell me. But at the end of the day, I was the one who decided whether I would like them or not.
It was also made clear to me that there were options to get them removed if I would really want to. I’ve played with the idea a couple of times but never for too long. It’s kind of like David Bowie’s unequal pupils or Whoopi Goldberg’s missing eyebrows. They were part of what made me myself.
With that, I was interested in the questions that came with them.
Sometimes with a nervous smile and soft spoken words: ‘Do you mind if I ask you what’s on your cheek?’. Other times with a sudden concern: ‘Did you fall on your face?’ or a snarky comment: ‘It looks like poop!’. Balanced out by a helping hand: ‘Oh you’ve got something there!’ or ‘I can cut them off for you’.
But after seeing the video of Dr Ian Stevenson I started to wonder whether they were mine or whether they belong to someone else. Maybe it’s not that much about what’s on my cheek.
Maybe it’s about who.
In the film 'Who's on my cheek?', I play with the idea
of what my past self did and how that changes my
view on my current identity.
