The Supermarket

The Pollyville Supermarket - where shopping has become one of the only activities the people of Pollyville can share.

This is the first film in "The Pandemic in Pollyville" short film series that chronicles stories from the pandemic in silent film style, featuring vintage Polly Pockets by Bluebird Toys.

  • Amanda E.K.
    Director
    Second Surface
  • Amanda E.K.
    Writer
    Second Surface
  • Amanda E.K.
    Producer
    Second Surface
  • Glass Cactus
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Pandemic, drama, narrative
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 20 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 12, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    iPhone 11
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Amanda E.K.

Amanda is a queer writer, filmmaker and creative coach, and the former editor-in-chief of Denver, Colorado’s Suspect Press—an art & literature magazine and indie book publisher. She writes about sex and relationships for Playlove and OFM, and she’s pitching a memoir about growing up in fundamentalist purity culture & the impact of religious trauma. Her production team—Glass Cactus—has won awards for their first TV pilot and their first short film, Second Surface, which is available on Youtube and Vimeo. Amanda’s work has been featured multiple times on the Low Orbit podcast and on Mortified Live. She’s spoken at Lighthouse Writers Workshop as a queer creative, and she’s been published in Jersey Devil Press, Monologging, Green Briar Review, South Broadway Ghost Society, Suspect Press, and others.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I made this film, The Supermarket, as part of a pandemic film series idea I had after digging up my childhood Polly Pocket toys during a visit to my parents’ house in Fall 2020. The supermarket toy immediately stood out to me as a microcosm of the initial pandemic pandemonium. The grocery store was where the pandemic first felt truly real and apocalyptic, and it was the only place for many people to be around others outside of their pod.

With this project, I’ve blended childhood nostalgia with real world issues, flattening the dynamic Polly Pocket colors to black & white in order to mimic the flattening of our vibrant pre-pandemic lives. Since I needed to find a way to convey dialogue, I decided to tell the stories with intertitles in silent film style - an era of film that I adore, especially Buster Keaton films.

The Supermarket focuses in on several Pollyville characters and their individual, varied experiences with the virus—such as Marisol, the First Responder who just finished her 8th-in-a-row 16-hour shift at the hospital; and Jim, the man who lost his job and comes in everyday to converse with the meat freezer.

The original score by Jack Oberkirsch is inspired by the music of composer Franz Listz to give the film a sinister, haunting feel to convey the off-putting fears regarding survival in the time of COVID.

This is my first solo film project, and I'm grateful to have had the time to teach myself the software and other elements that went into this. This project has helped keep me sane, focused, and purposeful during The Unknown, and it’s been a way to help me process, in real time, the collective trauma shared throughout the globe.