After Effects Required

The central theme of this work is alienation, the type developed in a land that sucks its nutrient from many other lands then fails to disseminate it in any fulfilling sense to its populace (which is often how vampirism works).

The film functions almost as a propaganda film or a topically reverse substitute for the film Alex watched in A Clockwork Orange.

There is a discomfiting theme of privilege in it; the privilege of thinking it is strange that your friend was abducted from a hospital when in so many countries sanctuary is transitory.

The first section attempts to present the subterranean thoughts of someone isolated even from their own thoughts, inescapable as they are. The physical place presented is my hometown. If you walk or ride a bike that costs less than $500, and do not either fit the extremely elitist cyclist or hipster paradigm in your appearance, you are instantly considered homeless or criminal, as many people in the Work Release program—a transitional program from jail or prison purportedly aiming at reintegration into society—are looked on as less than human, parasitic, and undesirable for display, while those sitting in judgment participate, with little contemplation, in overseas slavery. It is easy to feel their fear and the dismissal of your humanity radiating from their scrutiny.

There is a subtextual theme of poverty running throughout the film, particularly in how it was made, on an 8 year old refurbished mac and shot on two iPhones-the first free, the second $100, that were also being used as phones at the time, edit into its final form at the public library. This is, of course, first world poverty, which allows you just enough to keep dangling over the pit.

I am proud of how this film was made, and hope that people can view it and believe they are capable of even greater things.

Their is also the cultural bombardment of faces, as if an image can only be fascinating and resonate if a human is occupying it; the maddening insta-celebrity; the over-propagation of human images and landscapes that seem like replicas of one another causes us to begin to view ourselves as mere gradients, attenuating our self-worth and desire to individuate.

I believe all art is psychological warfare and must be approached within the broader view of human suffering. It is our duty to present this suffering. I also believe in the human imagination, in dreams, and wish one day to dissolve into them.