Futility

This film was my debut feature and undergraduate Senior Thesis project in 2014. The only changes made to the ten year anniversary cut were the opening and ending credits.

The film was originally meant to be a Coming of Age of film about my first romantic heartbreak but soon transformed into a work about interpersonal problems with my classmates at school while completing the film.

The film touches on themes such as virtue, sin, loss/gain of innocence, art as commodity and technical mechanical reproduction, idolatry, and desire.

The film is an experimental narrative structure that utilizes stylistic elements of first person documentary and Film Noir. The voiceover of the Narrator/Manager character soon dominates the tone of the film and engulfs one in a world of suburban teenage angst. Multiple filmic (Rebel Without a Cause, Sunset Blvd.) and literary (Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye) references are made to further bolster the complex depth of the protagonist.

Through the trials and tribulations of emotional suffering, healing, one questions whether telling their story was worth it. Was there enough catharsis to cultivate Images of triumph or was it all just a fruitless exercise in Futility?

(*English subtitles have been added via the Closed Captions feature on Youtube to better aid viewing experience if needed)