LIMBS

It all started with a panic attack. I, like a lot of artists, would consider myself a neurotic, but I’m usually in a very controlled state of mind. I try to think things through logically, tactically, trying to center myself in the chaotic world I occupy. At the beginning of the pandemic, I found myself continually delving into these anxiety attacks unlike any I have ever experienced. There were these pits in my stomach that were inescapable. I was bouncing off the walls, I could not sit still. So I started taking walks, but... extensive ones. Doing laps around a track for four or five hours at a time. Doing laps endlessly did give me some solace in this time. I knew exactly where I was going and where exactly I had been. It was some consistency in a very chaotic time, and that was a start.

This is where LIMBS came from, a massive pit in my stomach. I had no idea where I was running towards, but I knew I had something I was running from. I write from an extremely emotional place. Filmmaking is an extremely cathartic experience for me. It’s where I excise my ‘demons.’ My hope is that the inherent exploration of my own anxieties is something the audience is able to connect with on an emotional level. Every decision I’ve made on the film has been in the mindset of: ‘if it makes me want to either cry or throw up, I’m doing something right.’ I know on the surface that sounds deeply unappealing, but that’s exactly the sensation I’m trying to recreate. I have no way of knowing what an audience truly wants or needs from a work, so all I can do as an artist is try to approach the material truthfully and with sincerity. Anyone who has something to gain from what I’m trying to say hopefully will, and anyone who it doesn’t click for is water off a duck’s back. Maybe this thought process is naive, but for now, it’s the best I’ve got.

LIMBS, like all of my previous films, is a two-hander. It builds upon themes that I’ve been trying to explore in all of my work: ‘How do individuals relate to one another? How do they relate to themselves? What is our perception of human nature? Physically, emotionally, etc?’ But it is far more experimental both visually and sonically, and it by far has the least amount of dialogue than all of my previous work. LIMBS delves much further into the perspective of an individual, the hyper-focus of an obsessive, going as far as entering into a dreamlike state. I’ve had plenty of at-bats making soft-spoken, tender, humanistic works. This time I’m screaming at the top of my lungs... because there’s nowhere else for me to go.