Private Project

ALL THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF MYSELF.

Depersonalisation/derealisation disorder is defined as a disruption or breakdown of memory, consciousness or awareness, leaving those affected feeling detached from their own lives and experiences. It is the third most common psychiatric symptom, but has historically suffered from violent and negative representations in mainstream cinema.

In an attempt to ameliorate these current portrayals, ALL THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF MYSELF. forgoes traditional narrative, using twelve synchronous screen segments to convey the symptoms and effects of DPDR through its formal language. The film utilises a combination of archival footage and filmed sequences to create an atmosphere of unreality and invoke dissociation: the same lack of emotional connection, identity and perception that leads the disorder to be described as like viewing your own life through a movie screen.

  • Benjamin Schonken
    Director
  • Melanie James
    Mini DV Footage Captured By
  • Philip Schonken
    Mini DV Footage Captured By
  • Rikaz Niyaz
    Additional Lighting and Camera
  • Findlay Hamilton-Jones
    Audio Mastered By
  • Project Type:
    Experimental
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 14 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 10, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Queen Mary University of London
Director Biography - Benjamin Schonken

BENJAMIN SCHONKEN is a recent Film Studies graduate pursuing his blossoming interests in the extensive field of moving images and the artists' film. He looks to combine his work's thematic foundations with its material aesthetics, utilising the unique potential of form to capture, create and conceptualise our shared understandings of the world.

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Director Statement

The use of the split screen is aptly suited to disable the praxeological and sequential nature of cinema because of its ‘ability to present and juxtapose’ multiple events in time (Bizzocchi 2009: 3). Its elements of simultaneity, and the omniscient view it presents, can create a dissociative viewing effect, as the audience cannot find a fixed or predetermined focal point.

ALL THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF MYSELF. manifests the atmosphere of unreality split screen causes, recreating the curtailment ‘of emotional connection to past or present’ that is experienced by those with Depersonalisation/derealisation disorder (Abugel, Simeon 2006: 3). Through the use of twelve synchronous screen segments, it tries to elucidate the symptoms and effects of the disorder to its audience, utilising a combination of archival footage and filmed sequences.

It begins with old DV footage of its protagonist as a child, converging and overlapping the narrative’s temporal spheres to imply that the character is suffering from DPDR in the present day. It does not try to explain or define his symptoms, simply to convey them through its form. It implements what Sprengler defines as ‘spatial montage and temporal collage’ (Sprengler 2014: 93), slicing up and rearranging a traditional morning routine to represent a life that feels as if it is happening both concurrently and not at all.

By repurposing footage from other films and media, the film introduces qualities of surrealism, amalgamating corresponding visual and aural references to advance its discourses on multiplicity, identity and loneliness. It eventually descends into a chaotic and over-stimulating pace, grounded only in repeated motifs - such as a ringing alarm clock - that evince the seemingly endless cycle and unrelenting nature of everyday life with DPDR. The film’s ending gives it a cyclical, looping structure, not only demonstrating the facades of normalcy that disguise those with the disorder, but also implying a continuation of the protagonist's symptoms long after the screen has cut to black.