Cycle One

Adapted from The Interrogative Mood, a 2009 novel by Padgett Powell, Cycle One invites the viewer to consider daily existence as a drifter wonders the streets.

  • Serge Garcia
    Director
  • Pagdett Powell
    Writer
  • Serge Garcia
    Producer
  • Marc Merza
    Producer
  • Rufus Backman Ossandon
    Key Cast
    "Chica de la calle "
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    July 1, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    2,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Sweden
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    35mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.00
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • FIDMarseille —Marseille International Film Festival
    Marseille
    France
    July 19, 2021
    French Premiere
    Other Gems
  • Chicago Underground Film Festival
    Chicago
    United States
    November 7, 2021
    Honorable Mention
Director Biography - Serge Garcia

Serge Garcia is a filmmaker with a penchant for aimlessly wandering. His films emphasize intersectional narratives that explore loneliness, alienation, and possibilities for agency. He's developed a body of work through music videos, underground documentaries and narrative shorts. He uses family, culture, social histories, and his own experience as a first generation Mexican-Guatemalan-American. Born in Los Angeles and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area he is now based in Berlin, Germany.

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Director Statement

Padgett Powell’s novel The Interrogative Mood (2009), perhaps the author’s most bold, is made entirely of questions. It is a profound, experimental, and lyrical mediation that wrestles with life’s important queries in an ingenious way that render’s not only one story - it tells a thousand stories, all of them starring you!

In 2021, the Los Angeles based ambient music producer Marc Merza commissioned me to make a film for his ambient record Desolation Tape. I adapted Powell's novel for the screen and cast Swedish performance artist Rufus Backman Ossandón to star as the film’s lead. By embedding Powell‘s mix of wry humor and philosophical and absurd queries, the film challenges the conventions of narrative cinema in much the same way the Interrogative Mood challenges those of the novel.

Static long takes forces the viewer to linger within the passage of time and the emotions and self-reflection the narrator's queries evokes in the viewer. Embedded in its’ all-question format are ideas and emotions that can measure the gap between our moral compass, social consciousness, libido, and existential dread.