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Pica

Stacy, a young housewife in the fifties, takes care of her home and husband as perfectly as anyone could. Although, according to the mores of the day, a baby is overdue for the couple. This tension is heightened when Stacy must host a baby shower for the neighborhood socialites while struggling with a compulsive disorder.

  • Alex Richard Thomas
    Director
    Jukebox Girl, Rebel Boy
  • Michael Kauffman
    Writer
    The Coat The Check and The Trial
  • Addison Sharp
    Producer
    Gold
  • Ilayda Yigit
    Producer
    Tethered, The Coat the Check and The Trial
  • Emily DeForest
    Key Cast
    Jukebox Girl
  • Ketti Shum
    Production Designer
  • Ryan Civale
    Editor
    A Night for Buddy Stone
  • Matthew "Rove" Roveto
    Director of Photography
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Completion Date:
    April 28, 2017
  • Production Budget:
    3,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:35
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Alex Richard Thomas

Alex Richard Thomas is a film student at UNC School of the Arts with a passion for films that reimagine the past. His interest in film began with a background in directing theater in the Atlanta area. His previous film, Rebel Boy, was a finalist in the North Carolina Film Festival.

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Director Statement

PICA was inspired by Women’s Pictures of the 1950s. I’ve always been attracted to this time period and related to the protagonists of these films. They have everything they could want yet they find themselves unhappy, causing them to act out in raucous ways. In order to capture this, my team and I put great effort into recreating the glamorous aspects of the 1950s to play a grotesque story against. The real challenge of a period piece like this was figuring out how to present it to a modern audience.

The piece is about societal constraints. The weight of moving from a city to a judgmental small suburb feels claustrophobic, which we tried to emphasize with camera choices. This was time period that depended on niceties, values and institutions; Post-war America did not want to be analyzed or judged. If you didn’t like your husband, your friends or your job, you dealt with it internally. The weight of this we have exaggerated in order to appeal to the emotions in the way that Douglas Sirk would have done with his melodramas in the time period.