Dream Throat hotel room installation: Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans 2014 (Prospect 3+, New Orleans)


Synopsis: Welcome to a room that has hosted numerous tenants. This room is a collector of dreams, aggression, love, lust, and pain. You are the subject of it's experiment as you participate in a brief document of these particular collected occurrences. The tenants change while the stiff taxidermy and rose wallpaper remain as viewers like yourself. You are invited to an in depth and darkened view of what these thorns have collected. Here, stories stain the floor and soak into the mattress of a room we like to call Dream Throat

Dream Throat is an immersive, touring,  installation. Written, shot, and edited all in one room, this film installation focuses on the visitor’s relationships within a singular, yet dynamic space. Because the setting of both the film and the installation is a hotel room, a hypothetical mirror is created, allowing the viewer to actively experience the film as a situation, rather than passively view it as a spectator in a theatre.

Other installation locations:
Miami, Florida (Borscht Film Festival) 2015
Tampa, Florida (Gasparilla Film Festival) 2015
Glasgow, Scotland (Glasgow Short Film Festival) 2015
Baltimore, Maryland (Maryland Film Festival) 2015
Wilmington, North Carolina (Cucalorus Film Festival) 2015

(2014)

Deep Dark is an ongoing series that draws inspiration from suppressed memories, collected secrets, alleged rumors, and personal confessions. Deep Dark acts as an interpretive document of these stories and retells them through symbols, sound, and animation.

Episode 1: Josie and Jade
A plant that grows unusually large and prolific due to its nurturer’s strange secret
(2014, 3 min.)

Episode 2: No Parents
A biographical exploration of small freedoms, boyhood, and unadulterated curiosity
Official Selection, 2015 New Orleans Film Festival
Official Selection, 2015 Cucalorus Film Festival
(2015, 5 min.)

Deep Dark Books: My House
A reading from a book for children by children
(2014, 2 min.)

GORGON is an anthropological video documentation of interactions with lovers, friends, family, and an exploration of the female gaze. Through various social media platforms, recorded FaceTime conversations, text messages, iphone videos, and voice recordings GORGON experiments with a mix of audio-visual media to convey the everyday experiences of a diverse cross-section of young women in a patriarchal society, and my personal struggle to regain my voice as a female filmmaker. Laced with mythology and the surreal, and fueled by the writings of Helene Cixous and Bell Hooks, my goal is to use experimental film and social media to empirically define and convey the female gaze.

“You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she’s laughing…” - Hélène Cixous

Though this project contains narrative structure, it is rooted in an experimental, autobiographical approach to filmmaking reflecting the nature of life itself. GORGON represents next generation visual narrative because of its unique use of modern day platforms of communication. Because the narrative is written through an amalgamation of different media, GORGON innovatively blurs lines between narrative film, experimental film, social media, and video art.  In an industry dominated by men, GORGON will impact the future of diverse filmmaking and resonate with audiences accustomed to inundation of male gaze. 

This project will be available to view on Instagram and Vimeo beginning summer of 2017. 

Synopsis:
The Domestic Life of a Housecat is a study of hindsight. I, the filmmaker, play the invisible lead as I send the audience rifling through a two-year history of voicemails, and various relics of lost love. Using animation and found images, I pieces together this video as I find my footing after months disoriented by regret and spite. What was once such an intimate and desperate pursuit is now rewound and repackaged as a cinematic peek into the absurdity and ephemera of romantic love.

Personal Statment:
After years of working art department for films, fabricating Mardi Gras floats, commissioned and collaborative stop-motion animation works, this short film is my first independent film work. It is also my first time collaborating with a composer, directing actors, and editing. Though this work is different from the films I create today,  I see it as a the short film that jumpstarted my passion for working as an independent filmmaker and began my career as a director. 

Official Selection, 2016 Maryland Film Festival
Official Selection, 2016 Seattle Transmedia and Independent Film Festival

Producer - Matthew Porterfield
Sound Design - Matt Papich

(2016, 4 min.)