Experiencing Interruptions?

Slow Me Down

French Independent Film Festival 2019: Official Selection
Golden Bridge Istanbul Short Film Festival 2022: Official Selection

  • Martina Reese
    Director
  • Martina Reese
    Writer
  • Katarina Izquierdo
    Key Cast
  • Carlo Fata
    Key Cast
  • Martina Reese
    Cinematographer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 44 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 15, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    750 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    HDV
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Martina Reese

At the midpoint of a career in graphic design, Martina Reese fell in love with filmmaking. Since her 2010 exploratory debut shorts "Vicky Gets Dressed" and "One Boy," Ms. Reese has generated an ever expanding body of provocative, intriguing, short films.
Reese's first feature film was a 75-minute lo-fi, micro-budget, psychological horror/black-comedy titled "Zombie" (2021) [Prime and Tubi].
Reese's second feature film, "Exile," follows a brief period in the life of an undocumented Polish immigrant living in Chicago. The film was selected Best International Feature Film at the 2022 Polish International Film Festival.
Martina's short films continue to draw attention at international film festivals, including Paris Short Film Festival '23, Golden Bridge Istanbul Festival '22, Malta Film Festival '19, French Independent Film Festival '19.

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Director Statement

I discovered filmmaking the digital age, around 2010, which made it possible for me to learn by small-scale experimentation. In the years since, I have been exploring many aspects of the craft without being stopped by the financial or structural barriers that would likely have been insurmountable for me during the pre-digital film era.

Trained as a graphic designer but only partly fulfilled by my years of employment as a designer, film creation has been a breakthrough for me. It woke me up from a feeling of going through the motions. I love filmmaking because it is hard but not impossible. I love filmmaking because so much is out of my control, yet planning and organization are indispensable. I love filmmaking because it involves so much disappointment, yet there seems to always be a way to channel failure into growth. I love filmmaking because it is synthetic. I have never been comfortable in a narrow discipline and film brings everything together. Everything.

I love that filmmaking is both technical and aesthetic, visual and aural, literal and metaphorical, collaborative and solitary, organizational and intuitive. Filmmaking changes the way I inhabit the world; I find myself paying more attention to places, faces, witnessed phenomena, chance encounters, light, sound, music, literature. And, of course, filmmaking changes the way I watch film. To me, at best, films are groping and imperfect attempts to express something elusive and ambiguous. I am drawn to films that find beauty in the ordinary, the un-beautiful.

If film stories are a study of the interplay between the isolated and the socially interconnected self, the act of filmmaking depends on the same interplay. For me, the germ of an idea becomes conscious, then changes as it becomes external, affected by interaction with others in ways that are as unpredictable as the weather. I love the solitary periods of research, writing, and editing. I love the collaboration that happens during filming, particularly since my unpaid and underpaid nonprofessional collaborators bring surprising willingness, generosity, and curiosity.