Brighton Grace

A young Australian rugby player, patriot, and fan experiences a premonition. An impending oblivion punctures the lungs planted by collective identity, shallow pools, and deified humans—one oblivion unveils another—. Akin to Australian rugby players themselves, the titular figure and his vision represent not just rugby but our country's values and cultural epicentre of sport more broadly.

Thirty worlds in less than a blink and oh-so many more...

An extension of the Benign Violation theory of comedy developed by Tom Veatch and A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren. Source: The Cure (1917) Dir. Charles Chaplin and Edward Brewer

“Leda + Swans” depicts an infernal, mythic birth of cinema, dredging the violence and horror from Wallace McCutcheon’s comic short film “Photographing a Female Crook” (1904). Leda, who may or may not be a falsely accused young woman, is brought in for a mugshot by two officers. She first attempts to avoid the camera’s gaze, and, when overpowered and manhandled, contorts her face to ruin the photograph. However, her small rebellion proves futile; she was already being recorded, objectified, mapped, and co-opted by the Godhead of the director. As her body and image are repurposed and transmuted ad infinitum, the filmic universe also explodes into a supernova. What is born out of this suffering and manipulation is another example of our sublime medium and modern muse. She will not be last the Leda, and she may not even be the first. Who is the guilty party here? Is beauty a chimera in traditional cinema? Has the ephemeral cinema of the attractions and distractions era gone anywhere?

“The Way We Dream” is the third Anthology Film of the “Letterboxd Independent Filmmakers” Discord Server, for which eleven cinematic artists from around the globe came together to create Short Film Works centered upon the primary notion of “Dreams”.

Everything flows.

An attempt at an unadulterated biography of one life of many within a moment, which always will be, and always was, a memory.