Private Project

Artifice

A meditation on a mystic woman haunted by pronouns, personality, and projection. Through poetry, presence, and subtle exposition, the film forgoes conventional narrative structure in favor of circling around its thesis: What can you know about a person? They shift in the light.

  • Thee Rose
    Director
  • Thee Rose
    Writer
  • Thee Rose
    Producer
  • Justicia Wilson
    Key Cast
    "The Mystic"
  • Sheanni Sims
    Key Cast
    "The Huntress"
  • Daniel Esteban
    Key Cast
    "The Lover"
  • Derek Deyling
    Key Cast
    "The Magician"
  • Meschac Hercules
    Cinematographer
  • Angus Algrant
    Music Director
  • Sheanni Sims
    Art Director/Script Supervisor
  • Diego Yangali
    Production Manager
  • Thee Rose
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Genres:
    Experimental, Poetry, Philosophy, Psychological Thriller, Queer Cinema
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 57 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 1, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Hi8 Tape
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Thee Rose

Thee Rose is a poet, filmmaker, and organizer from Brookyln. They also go by Starveling Moon because their life is a midsummer night's dream. Their work explores intimacy, identity, and the mystical in the mundane. Thee has released a short film, Rapture, published a collection of poetry, Fragile Eyed Frenchie, and devised performance pieces for arts and cultural spaces across New York City. Their most recent film, Artifice, had it's world premiere at Newfest. Thee is currently writing their next project, Black Listlessness, a western about a lost woman who checks herself into a remote wellness retreat.

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Director Statement

I am a sacred keeper of private thoughts. Thoughts of my own, thoughts of those around me, thoughts of those who came before me, and my personal favorite: thoughts that find their way to me mysteriously. Around this time last year, I re-read Richard Siken’s War of Foxes. He asks, “What can you know about a person?” I found myself beckoning to that question over and again until I thought: maybe we’ll never know anything about anyone. This unknowing became Artifice.

Perhaps it was a mundane question to muse over, but I found a mystical quality in the elusiveness of its potential answers. My work and my life strive to reveal the mystical in the mundane, so I thought this question would make for a compelling thesis on screen given my sensibilities. At its core, Artifice is about personality, pronouns, projection, and the cyclical nature of self. It is the acceptable face to the unacceptable mind. It is a film of swallowed tyrannies, in the name of Audre Lorde. My goal with this project is to make my audience question what it means to be a person versus what it means to be a persona and encourage them to find a reality where both can live.

I chose to shoot on tape and utilize archival wardrobe pieces because Artifice needed to evoke ancestral feelings of fragmentation, memory, and listlessness. I fawn over films that feel as if they could be from any time period or any place in the world. It speaks to the expansiveness I desire to embody as a filmmaker. I was inspired by the works of experimental revolutionaries such as Jonas Mekas, Amy Greenfield, and Marlon Riggs, but I was also inspired by narrative auteurs like Wong Kar-wai, Harmony Korine, and Sofia Coppola, among others. The title sequence is a reference to Żuławski’s Possession, whereas the mirror references Aronofsky’s Black Swan.

I’m inspired by music and dreams and memories just as much. All of it built the language and painted the picture of the world Artifice lives in: intimate, haunting, and colored with philosophical musings. My kaleidoscope of influences, alongside my community and chosen family, gave me the freedom and framework to craft a character study with a narrative arc that has a nonlinear timeline and a lyrical rhythm.

In short, Artifice is a surreal descent into the unknown that I hope will find the right people to fall into it with quiet hesitation and unflinching curiosity, questioning what’s behind the veil and what it reveals about themselves.