Proposal: For my final project, I plan on making a short film that encompasses the aesthetics and themes from films from the start of the New Queer Cinema era. The aspects that I will be focusing on is the idea of addressing a specific issue from the LGBT+ movement. For example, in the movie Poison, one section of the movie focuses on the homo-erotica that occurs in prisons. For my film, I want to focus on the struggle for a person to come out. There is this poem that I have written that was about the insecure, stressful feelings of coming out. I want to use the poem as the dialogue for the film. Another aspect of New Queer Cinema film, that is present in both the start of the movement and current times, is the use of an inner monologue to describe the feeling of the character. With that said, I plan on shooting a personal, intimate film of me preparing and taking a bath, an activity that is both personal and intimate. I wanted to compile footage of different angles, both up-close and far away, and of me doing random “poses” in the bathtub. From this, I will basically be collaging the footages together to make it a bit abstract. The audio I plan to use, like I said, is the poem dubbed on top of the footage but I also plan on including the atmospheric sounds like the water dripping, etc.
For the risograph, I plan on making a movie poster for my final project. It is going to have a collage, abstract look similar to the posters of the movies in the 1990s New Queer Cinema and of the ads for the queer film festivals I found at the Falles Archive. A lot of these posters isolated specific body parts, I plan on doing the same.
The Poem I Plan to Use for the Monologue:
I was treading water,
Afraid to dive into the depths of the truth
I was in fear of the unknowing,
The darkness
No one tells you how to do this.
Some people never need to explore the depths of themselves
But for me,
I might drown in it
I was no longer able to tread
My body, my mind
Were unable to support themselves
Grown weak,
Unable to continue
They were fatigued.
Fatigue from the 16 years
of constant treading.
Fatigue from the 16 years
Of constant denial.
So I stopped
And laid there motionless.
Waiting for the water to consume me
Whole,
Until all I see is water,
The truth.
Part of me wanted to pull myself up
In fear of drowning,
In fear of the truth.
But I couldn’t,
So i continued to sink.
Water can distort not just our vision
But also how we view ourselves
So who am I under the water?
Who am I?
I no longer fear the depths,
To what the bottom beholds.
No longer I fear the water filling my lungs
To breath the watery truth
In and out
I need to accept who I am
There is no escape
I am the water.
The water is me.
Mindmap:
Storyboard:
Link to video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/379108639
Risograph:
Final Critique Evaluation:
From the final critiques, it seem clear to the viewers/the class that my influences from the New Queer Cinema movement and the Poison movie were present in my short film. They enjoyed the change of aesthetic/visuals when it switched to an internal environment, and they thought that the editing during that section was successful in capturing the older film look. There were some questions on the audio of the dialogue, the audio was echo-ey and not as crisp, therefore, the words weren’t as easily as understood. I understand this point and agree with the critique, I feel like at some points of the dialogue gets lost to the echoes, given that I recorded it in the bathroom. However, once I told them the location I recorded the voice-over, some felt that now it made sense to have that ambiguity, echo-ey sound. I do also enjoy the echo feel and the ambiguity, I feel like the words could be a little more crisper to actually grab the content of the poem and what it is saying. There was a critique from Michelle stating that this video could be elaborated even further from just the bathroom setting. I agree with this and also felt that confining it all in a bathroom scene felt like it was dragging it on. I want to explore other ways I can demonstrate the metaphor that “the water is me”. For my risograph, there were compliments on the composition, but again, it was suggested to maybe take it further than just a bathroom setting.
