Dramatic Narrative

I started writing this film (my first feature) as a traditional narrative fiction in 2017, but quickly realized that such a form was wildly insufficient. The general shift can be summarized in the change of the film’s title: originally titled “Good Men,” I could only get so far in a critique rooted in my own lived experience and research before it felt like an empty “men are evil” PSA. Technically my thesis film at Rutgers University advised by Nicolás Pereda and Danielle Lessovitz, this project is the result of four years of being surrounded by Greek culture. Though I have never been associated with a Greek organization myself and they compose a small percentage of the student population, these spaces are highly visible on most campuses and their toxicity seeps far beyond a physical presence (specifically white men fraternities)… That is, in many cases, providing a direct line into the upper echelons of American politics and finance.

The final product, “Dramatic Narrative,” weaponizes its “fiction” and oscillates between different formal strategies to achieve a more dynamic look at the past, present, and future of hegemonic identities. The film’s spirit relies heavily on appropriated primary source documents, which is clarified by the long list of sources in the first section of the end credits. The film is undoubtedly about the horrific situation between Sophie, Corey, and Trent, but more importantly is concerned with the dominant and melodramatic dimensions of its contents; how audiences consume and reproduce narratives (in news, art, day-to-day life, etc). “Dramatic Narrative” embraces its own failures in real time.