Ascendent
A corporate worker, played by Anna Newell, awakes from an extreme nightmare scenario only to realise she is late for work. Instead of taking her exit to work, she continues driving which turns into a journey that questions the boundaries of reality and what is an illusion.
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Robert LangDirectorThe Iron Sisters, Encore, Return to the Pleasure Dome
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Robert LangWriterThe Iron Sisters, Encore, Return to the Pleasure Dome
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Anna NewellWriterThe Iron Sisters
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Robert LangProducerThe Iron Sisters, Encore, Return to the Pleasure Dome
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Anna NewellProducerThe Iron Sisters
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Anna NewellKey Cast"Maya"The Iron Sisters
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Project Type:Experimental, Short
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Genres:Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller
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Runtime:9 minutes
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Completion Date:July 24, 2019
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Production Budget:120 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital Canon mark IV
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
Robert Lang is a photographer and director living in Los Angeles, California, Originally from Durban, South Africa.
His period living in Camden Town from 2001 - 2011 resulted in a successful exhibition in 2016 at the Doomed Gallery in London that was reviewed by the Observer arts, Guardian, i-D Magazine and other publications resulting in the project being published into the photo book in April 2017 'Filthy Gorgeous Camden Town'.
He released his second photo book 'The Emancipation of Judy" in June 2017 which chronicles Judy, a blow-up dolls extensional crisis in a diary form of self portraits was featured in Metal Magazine, Afernyne Magazine and currently published in American Chordata Issue 7, 2018.
This followed with the release of his fourth photo book in December 2018 titled ‘Idolatry’. The photo book features the fine-art photography of body form portraiture capturing the intimacy of Judy and John and the beauty of the anatomy of the plastic blow up doll figure. The new book portrays the bonding and intimacy between Judy and John concluding her journey in self-portraits and featured in Metal Magazine.
He self published his third book ‘Hollywood Walk of Shame’ in June 2018, a 64 page photo book documenting the 36 Hollywood honourees who stars still remain on the Walk of Fame even though they have been accused of crimes of rape, sexual assault, harassment, domestic abuse and even murder. It was featured in i-D Magazine , Hunger and HERO.
Moving into film his first short film 'The Return to the Pleasure Dome' starred actress Skye P. Marshall in 2017 as an inspiration and homage to Kenneth Anger’s 1954 cult classic "The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" and was selected for the 2018 Bokeh South African Fashion Film Festival. In 2018 he released the feminist short ‘The Iron Sisters’ and ‘Encore’
The Iron Sisters is based on two sisters confronting a world where men are a dying minority in a female led matriarchal society. Men fear Women in a modern feminist take on the violent myth of American masculinity.It was selected for the 2019 Bokeh South African Fashion Film Festival
‘Encore’ explores a realm of surreal self-obsession, embodied in an outlandish and dreamlike character, whose need for validation from an unseen observer dominates all thought.
Having no formal training or studies in photography, he is self-taught and his first occupation was as the official Fashion Week Front of House/Backstage photographer for The Daily Mail. Covering over the years London, Paris, Paris Couture and New York Fashion Week. He has contributed editorially, written interviews and featured on NPR radio “Take Two” feature for his work and in Various Fashion Magazines including Schön!, V Magazine, Dazed, Hunger, HERO Magazine, High Snobiety and Oyster Magazine.
The daily routine of waking up and going to work becomes a tedious activity that everyone can relate to. The alarm clock going off at the same time, the same commute to a job you may love or dispise. We have all thought about what taking that action of ignoring that turn off the freeway to the office job and instead to just keep driving and see where the road would take you. The theme of the film plays on the manifestiation of consciousness which determines our lived reality. Is the world we experience real or is it a dream. Or is it all in the mind? The world we experience is no more “out there” than are our dreams.
Plato believed the real world was a world of ideas and eternal perfect forms, his analogy of “The Cave” is still pertinent to our own experience. Most of us assume that the sights and sounds we perceive are the "real world". When science inform us that we are not seeing reality as it is, but merely the images that manifests in our minds, we shrug in disbelief. How can that be? How can the world that I experience so clearly as "out there", be just an image in the mind?