Announcing My Very First Short Film Premiere Coming Saturday, February 1st!
Live Streaming Premiere (Saturday, February 1st - 8pm/CST):
Available Sunday:
This has a lot to do with the passing of David Lynch; in addition, two of my most recent viewings were by filmmakers Deborah Stratman and the most recent essay regarding the final, highly experimental work from Nicholas Ray.
I’ve been waiting to be wowed or taken aback by cinema again. Of course, I love the end of the year binging to uncover new titles and rank favorites but most of the time, I mostly get excited by older films that I’ve discovered for the first time. Low and behold, I’ve made my own short film and suffice to say, I was excited making it, editing it, spending hours making choices.
As many of you know, I’m also in production on a mental health documentary and I took some time off from editing that when I was in an intensive outpatient program. This weekend, I thought it would be good to get reacquainted with the editing software, practice putting something together. Little did I know I would stay up till 2am working on my first short film.
That’s exactly what happened the past couple of nights. The impetus was a combination of two things: I tried transcendental meditation for the first time (which yes obviously has to do with the passing of Lynch) and when I was going for a walk, I saw a gentleman climbing a telephone poll. I asked if I could film him and he said, “okay, just keep my face obscured.”
My immediate thought was, wow, that was my dad’s first real job after he got out of the Navy. I wasn’t even born yet. How did he survive the cold, how was he trained to do this job? How did he work his way up from repairing cables and wires to becoming a telecommunications manager / engineer? A lot of questions came into my head post-meditation and while going for a walk.
I sat down in front of YouTube, began looking for archival footage of where he worked: Illinois Bell, which later became Ameritech, eventually merging into AT&T. I began to think of how separate of a life he led that I’ll never know about because I’m not him, for one thing and because he passed away. I know he took me to his office over on the corner of State & Randolph, but memories are fuzzy. Most of what I remember are contained in home movies.
What if I could express my curiosity about his past by combining some trippy visuals, old home movie audio and just some strange peculiarities I’ve found online? In addition, I included four shots I did myself on my iPhone, including one of a cell phone tower not too far from where my mom lives which is what closes the film. I also went downstairs to the boiler room and did some gnarly sound recording, pitch shifting, crackle-adding and some radiator hiss/hum.
The result is my first short film which will premiere this coming Saturday — The Switching Division. It starts out with some interesting old footage I found of a telephone repair man beginning his day, which I imagine is what my dad at the start, including having to deal with an unruly, impatient customer. Then it just goes from there into something akin to a mashup of various images and sounds, some were even assembled by accident, but I liked them so much I decided to keep them. I think I know what the film is about.
Maybe you’ll have your own ideas too! It is only a few minutes long and will premiere this Saturday, February 1st - 8pm over at this Kosmi Channel. The following day, it will be uploaded to Vimeo for all those to view whenever they wish. In addition to showing the film, there will be a compilation of fun clips, sketches, short films and other various collages pertaining to “electricity,” in memory of the great David Lynch. I won’t ramble on much further but I’m so excited to put my first short film as a director out into the world very soon. Be warned: it’s weird, experimental, kind of abstract, though maybe you’ll get something out of the experience the way I did putting it all together.
