Acting
Alice and Jack are lucky to be living in the idealized community of Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning exactly what they’re doing in Victory, and why.
A 15-minute short about squatting in London, the film sees Lebon’s signature melding of cut-and-paste graphics and animation meet disarmingly intimate camera work. Told from the perspective of both the squatter and the squatted, it explores unconventional choices and the moral grey areas found in ownership, public and private living, family and community.
Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theater troupe. When the workshop's ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women's lives.
Sam, newly a mother, shops at a supermarket with her baby and husband Carlson. She throws a neighborhood shishkabob party and has a family Sunday breakfast. But through her smiles and picturesque tasks, there's a suppression. Sam’s grown something she can no longer contain. This breaking point is the film SWALLOWED, where psychological horror meets dance.
A man and his grandmother hide out from an ominous broadcast. The Grim Reaper hosts a TV show. The formerly incarcerated recount and reinterpret their first days of freedom. A suburban mom's life is upturned by the beast growing inside of her. And a high school gym teacher runs drills from inside a volcano. What happens when five of independent film's most adventurous filmmakers join together to literally adapt each other’s dreams for the screen?
Sarah and Isolde share an interest in the traditional music and dance of the Balkans, but it turns out that shared interests don’t always unite them. Their trip, initially a fun bonding experience, takes a southward turn when Sarah becomes interested in handsome fellow camper Steph. A seemingly innocent romantic overture touches off an abrupt shift in the dynamic between the two girlfriends, steering a previously ecstatic camp outing down a psychological rabbit hole.
A dystopian tale, shot in magisterial black and white, about a world that’s variously tortured and enlivened by sound.
