Matricide

The film began when my charcoal drawings of the neighbourhood would rub off onto the opposite pages of my sketchbook. In a short time, I came to prefer these smudged mirror images. I reworked them in the dark, using the abstract shapes of low-light vision to inform the new, stamped impressions of reality.

I've always taken an interest in collage filmmaking, drawing inspiration from filmmakers like Arthur Lipsett, Theodore Ushev, and Ralph Bakshi. I built an initial throughline using samples of seemingly unrelated sound and image. Later, by manipulating my drawings with animation and archival footage, I was led to the film's central theme: exploring generational degradation within a narrative.

April Brockmiller was someone who was always presented on MTV's reality shows as an alcoholic antagonist with a public image created entirely by a reworking of reality. Juxtaposing her interviews alongside a fictional narrative about generational alcoholism, narrated by sampled clips of television shows (including her own), introduces several more layers of generational narrative loss.

Can we still trust the narratives around us? I don't know. Our reality is cracking further every day into what those in power want us to believe, a mindset that has thoroughly permeated our psychology. There isn't much the average person can do about it, but at the very least, we pick through the pieces and try to find the points of fracture.