Private Project

Boat Film

This boat is out of control!

  • Philip Rabalais
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 50 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 28, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • XXVe International Encounters Traverse, (Almost) Unlimited Capacity
    Toulouse
    France
    April 7, 2022
  • Winnipeg Underground Film Festival
    Winnipeg
    Canada
    May 27, 2022
  • Drunken Film Fest
    Oakland
    United States
    October 10, 2022
    Best Avant-garde Film
Director Biography - Philip Rabalais

Philip Rabalais is a filmmaker and electronic musician from Fairfield, Iowa. His movies embrace narrative abstraction in an effort to challenge and loosen conventional habits of perception. Rabalais received an MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa in 2020. His work has screened internationally at venues such as Slamdance, NoBudge, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Onion City, and on filmmakermagazine.com; his work as a cinematographer has been featured in the Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Director Statement

“Boat Film” invites viewers to fall into a mysterious, hypnotic image: an abandoned boat stuck going in circles. Questions of truth are raised and upended again and again in the image’s wake. In this way the video engages with discourses around digital vs. celluloid cinema, both celebrating ontological distinctions, as well as calling attention to how we can sometimes allow these differences to guide our experience and understanding of images more than is appropriate. Ultimately, it's the viewer’s imagination which is celebrated, as the boat becomes fully abstract - and all that is left in the universe.