CLICK THE PIC TO CHECK OUT THE FILM STREAMING ONLINE.

Hot on the heels of my thesis film SAY GRACE BEFORE DROWNING screening on HBO, I now have my latest (and 1 month into being graduated from NYU, my  first film created post film school) short film BLACK SWAN THEORY streaming online for 1 week.

This whole process has been somewhat experimental for me as I gauge the responses to both films. I’m surprised that I seem to be garnering a stronger audience for Black Swan Theory: arguably my most mainstream work to date, a lot less heavy handedly socially conscious than SGBD and having nothing to do with Africa (for once).

This is kind of exciting for so many reasons, namely 3:

1) I’m not as loony and cerebral as I thought: apparently there is an audience that appreciates the ideas I’ve been afraid to nudge into the spotlight..

2) BST was shot for about 1/10 the budget of SGBD, making it the cheapest short I’ve directed thus far (barring the p.o.s. shorts I shot in undergrad) p.o.s. = piece of shit.

3) All of this supports my lofty goal to turn BST into my first feature film (I’m pretty much DONE DONE DONE with shorts for a hot minute: unless of course someone is throwing $$$ at me to shoot one ; )

After this initial release online, I plan to tour the festival circuit with BST, which will be so schizophrenic since I’m still wrapping up my tour of SGBD.

All of this love is at once appreciated and overwhelming.  What if they see me for who I truly am: a hack with a mac computer a film school education and a borderline schizo overactive imagination?!

Am i thoroughly elated with the outcome of BST?  No: it’s absolutely not my perfection.  I had very little time to live with the screenplay prior to shooting it.  I literally won the Shadow & Act Competition with my first draft and from thence forth, never had the opportunity to revise.  Everything happened so fast, casting, rehearsal, fight choreography, locking down locations, etc.  We shot all of this over a Halloween weekend (two days)–so yeah, this was guerilla filmmaking at it’s finest.

My process is typically a lot more involved and slow moving.

Let me know if you check out the short and leave me a message!

xoxo

Sometimes you stumble across imagery that takes your breath away: this rarely happens for me, but I’m thankful when it does.

Model: Oluwatoyin Pyne
Make Up: Risha Rox
Wardrobe Styling: Folayan Xui and Kia Chenelle
Hair: Joanne Petit-Frere
Photo: J. ‘Quazi’ King

The moment you’ve all been anxiously awaiting…or not…has arrived. ; ).  For those of you who like to take control, SGBD is FREE on DEMAND.

I just yanked this schedule directly from HBO’s website.

Yeah, the times are kind of janky but whatyagonnado?!  My short is on HBO (for the second time): can’t complain too fucking much. ; )

Like Lil Wayne said: “The fruits of my labor, I enjoy ‘em while they still ripe” :so gratifying when your creative work garners nearly instant results.

This film diminished nearly every ounce of sanity (the very little I had to sacrifice) .  As my NYU Film school tenure comes to a sweet end, I can’t thank my immensely talented cast and crew enough for assisting me in bringing this vision to life.

STASIS: inactivity resulting from a static balance between opposing forces:

finally crawling out of the black hole that has left me mentally, emotionally and physically paralyzed for the past err month.  Moving forward on the 3 projects I’m currently rotating on my overfilled plate and smacking myself the fuck out of it.

Feeling sorry for oneself has to be one of the most despicable and unproductive spaces to occupy.

xoxo

January 3, 2011
Kartina Richardson

Black Swan And Bathrooms

Sitting in a coffee shop I heard a man say:

“I saw Black Swan the other night. It was trash. Elevated trash, but trash.”

When you see a good movie, a very good movie, it’s difficult to remember that the film is not objectively extraordinary.

“Black Swan was great.”

You say to yourself and aloud.

You are certain the world agrees. Summer is hot, winter is cold, and Black Swan is a great film. Now this isn’t exactly evidence you are feeling superior. Superiority means knowing there exists another lesser point of view over which yours rises supreme. If you cannot even fathom an opposing view it is beyond arrogance. It is pure solipsism.

So, if you are sitting in a coffee shop and you hear a man say:

“I mean it was just awful. Natalie Portman was sweating beads, and blood and just really straining for an Oscar.  I don’t like it when actors strain. When you have to strain to do it, when it’s not natural, it’s just fake to me.”

The world will crack in two.

Of course this thinking reveals that I am often deep in my own world with its own rules and definitions for things.

Which brings us neatly to the issue of Nina and her many identities, a split shown most clearly in the bathroom: the Western world’s last vestige of privacy in an increasingly transparent society.

For those of us not living or working in solitude, the bathroom offers the sole moments in our day when we may escape the gaze of others.

For Nina, trapped under the eyes of her mother and fellow ballerinas, bathroom moments are essential. She has grown to adulthood without ever having true privacy. It is only when Nina is given a private dressing room, the first room in her life that is truly respected as hers, that her rival identity emerges. This is the darker Nina that then bars her bathroom and bedroom door. This is the Nina that emerges only when given solitude.

When Nina does not have her dressing room, she has the bathroom.

If we aren’t in an emotional crisis, these few minutes aren’t usually regarded as significant, but any time spent away from other eyes, even seconds, is important. These moments demonstrate to us not only the rapidity with which we can switch modes but the sharp differences between our various public personas and our many private selves.

Think of all the odd things you’ve done in a bathroom in your lifetime. What child hasn’t secretly explored the substance of their waste. What pre-teen hasn’t hasn’t masturbated nervously. What person hasn’t escaped to the bathroom during a business meeting and made a weird face in the mirror to say to the world: “You don’t know I’m doing this right now. Oh there’s so much you don’t know.”

No other moment can so clearly reveal that our public life is all, in fact, an act. An act with a purpose, but an act all the same.

Solitude welcomes a self or selves that does not, cannot, appear when in the company of others. Private selves refuse to manifest in public because other personas are at the front lines. Like mother Elephants circling their calves, our public selves form ranks. Each is a layer of armor, tweaking our interactions in the unconscious name of self defense.

When we enter the bathroom, as we are closing the door, there is a moment of transition. Our public selves are silenced, and our private selves have yet to appear. For half an instance all is still.

…until the private selves say hello.

And they can be quite dark.

They may write WHORE across the bathroom mirror, or peel a line of skin up your finger.

For this reason, solitude is not always an escape.  And for some of us, most of us I contend, there are enough private selves that solitude is not always solitary at all.

Inner selves are another circle of mother Elephants, protecting the center, with new and more devious defense weaponry. One may make us pick at our skin, cut, burn, or drink till the cows come home. This is all “self-destructive behavior” but the purpose of all self destructive behavior is to protect from pain, to offer a moment of escape.  This particular self’s destructive actions distress another self, one that can see the unhealthyness of the behavior, and life-long SSRI prescriptions are born.

You aren’t a single entity, but a household. One with all the politics, drama, violence, or delicacies of interaction of a family.

Just as there are different public personas there are many private ones. Freud said there are three. I say there are four or five. Loosely speaking these are:

1. The Imp: The self that enjoys causing problems. It sabotages all your efforts towards happiness. Gaining pleasure from the bullshit it heaps upon your other selves.

2. The Baby: The self that is encumbered by and stressed under the problems the Imp has created.

3. The Housekeeper: The one that watches it all. It comforts the baby, scolds the imp, tries its hardest to get the center to come out of its room and take control and drives everyone to gymnastics class. The Housekeeper is who we usually spend most of our alone time with.

4. The Center: The strong and transcendent self that sits behind all the squabbling and smiles because problems aren’t problems and nothing matters (in a good way). This is the self all others are protecting. It is deep, deep, way the fuck deep down.

In some form and to varying degrees, these are the folks you are with when you are “alone”.

Depending on how powerful and cunning your personas are, things can get dangerous.

Nina’s got one devious Imp. A strong persona that only manifests in private. Though shades of it appear here and there (stealing from Beth etc), it avoids revealing itself outside of the bathroom or dressing room. The pointed exception to this is Nina’s drug night, when ecstasy lowers all the gates and lets her Imp run free and unchecked (and is the only time outside of a bathroom that her hair is literally down). This persona gradually gains power in public and private moments as the stresses of the ballet force Nina to use and so acknowledge her darker energies. Lily (Mila Kunis) is only painted black. Nina is black through and through and through. By denying her shadow, Nina adds layers to it. When you hold something down that’s pushing to come up, it gains momentum. If you hold your dark Imp down, it will gouge a hole in your White Swan’s stomach and call the show its own.

There is one particular bathroom moment where Nina’s Imp and Housekeeper do battle*, almost literally. Realizing that she’s been scratching, Nina’s Housekeeper frantically clips her nails. As she does, the camera moves to the right. At the same moment, partially camouflaged by camera movement, Portman’s expression changes abruptly: her frantic face is momentarily calm and deeply mischievous. The Imp sabotages and the Housekeeper cleans up the mess.

The origins of Nina’s war of identities aren’t clear, and this is the movie’s greatest strength: it doesn’t explain what doesn’t need to be. I don’t want to know if she’s actually schizophrenic or in fact a strange magic being that really does grow feathers. Why does Nina scratch? When did it start? Where is her dad? How old is she? Her relationship with her mother is clearly perverse, but one we can’t exactly finger. A sexual element is hinted at, oppression is shown, but nothing is explained. A history of some kind of trauma is established, but the exact cause doesn’t matter. The edges are blurry. This is familiar in avant garde film, but in mainstream cinema that usually assumes the audience is dumber than it is, it’s a rarity.  In Black Swan, scenes aren’t spent establishing relationship back story any longer than necessary. Time isn’t wasted justifying actions. Any more facts would wrench the film out of the realm of the surreal in which it belongs. When direction is good, a glance from one character to another, or from one character’s persona to its rival self, is all it takes to know the deal.

In Nina’s case the deal is bloody. Powerful and irreparably broken identities have to destroy each other in order for the center to find peace.

Alas, poor Nina! I knew her.

Taken from HERE

I’ve been MIA from this blog: still debating how long I’m going to continue it as I’ve completely and utterly fallen in love with my new Tumblr.

I’m in post production on my latest short film formerly entitled Black Swan Theory–now entitled |The Countless Things She Served With Her Eyes|.

My VFX Artist has been sending me over some conceptual rough ideas for titling, effects, etc and I’m getting excited all over again.  It’s amazing how the post production process reawakens one’s passion for his/her work.

Both my composer and sound designer are also hard at work to help me premiere the best version of the short possible.

This is the short film for which, Im currently writing a feature draft.

Some artists thrive off these emotions: I don’t.  I’m finding myself in a state of artistic paralysis, unable to be prolific–unable to move forward…on anything.  I recently won a 50,000$ Panavision Rental Equipment Grant @ The Bronze Lens Film Festival (Say Grace Before Drowning). I’m also nominated for a Director’s Guild of America Jury Award, and yet in light of my continued “success” there seems to be a void–alas the cliche of the brooding and never quite fulfilled artist.

All the success in the world means nothing if your personal life isn’t in order: mine isn’t.  Though we all have demons, some are more formidable than others.

I leave you with a retrospective of one my favorite filmmakers: Claire Denis, a fellow dark and somewhat perverse woman filmmaker: via

The Films Of Claire Denis: A Retrospective

The IFC Center in New York City recently ran a retrospective of French director Claire Denis’s laudable films—the most expansive retrospective of her work that NYC has ever seen—to commemorate the theatrical release of “White Material” this Friday. On the occasion, we have also decided to look back at some of her most noteworthy features.

In a Claire Denis film, skin is always a character. Whether it be the leathery, rugged skin of Michel Subor‘s aged body in “The Intruder,” which Denis examines in leisurely takes, or the way that skin serves as a kind of titillation in the vampiric horror film “Trouble Every Day,” the beauty found in a Denis frame is natural and imperfect, and skin becomes a medium to express this. It’s the blemishes on Tricia Vessey‘s body in ‘Trouble,’ and the moles and warts on Subor’s back, that give Denis’ images texture. She would have no interest in the “clean and clear and under control” skin some advertisements promise.

But there’s a greater reason why skin is so emphasized, and it has to do with race. As a French woman born in Paris but raised in colonial Africa, Denis is fascinated (and saddened) by the friction between whites and blacks, which she’s considered throughout her career. You can track this theme from her autobiographical debut, 1988’s “Chocolat” to 1994’s “I Can’t Sleep,” a subdued procedural which examines the hardships of the immigrant experience in Paris, to 2000’s “Beau Travail,” a re-imagining of Melville‘s “Billy Budd,” which maps out a battle of white egos against the harsh terrain of Djibouti, to this year’s “White Material,” something of a career summation and a return to Africa, though this time the location is unnamed.

“White Material” is Denis coming full circle, her more narrative-driven early work (especially “Chocolat,” its closest cousin within her filmography) clashing with the abstract rhythms and impressionistic imagery of her more recent films, such as the inscrutable “Intruder.” If 2009’s “35 Shots of Rum,” a moody, meditative family drama and contender for the best film of last year, found this great artist settling into her old age (she’s now 62) and embracing her love of Yasujiro Ozu (it is, after all, something of a remake of Ozu’s “Late Spring”), “White Material” shows she still has some fight left in her, enough to confound and enthrall in equal measure.

“Chocolat” (1988)
Though born in France, Claire Denis spent much of her childhood in Africa; her father was stationed there as a French Official, and she’s said in interviews that her family moved often so they could come to understand the “geography” of their region. Denis’s debut, “Chocolat,” uses these experiences; it’s the only film Denis herself considers autobiographical. It traces the early life of an adolescent girl, very significantly named France, whose upbringing bears similarity to Denis’ own. A framing device sandwiches the film between two present-day sequences: a prologue and stellar epilogue involving France as an adult visiting Cameroon after years away. In between, we’re thrust into Northern French Cameroon, where seven-year-old France lives with her parents and “houseboy” Protee (Isaach De Bankolé). Denis focuses on the relationship between Protee and France’s mother (Giulia Boschi), as seen through the young girl’s eyes—a relationship complicated by racial and class tensions. France herself observes, but not passively: she learns. Most significant is the knowledge her father imparts to her, describing the horizon as a line that is “there and not there” (a metaphor for the line which separates race and class). Many have praised Denis’ latest, “White Material,” but its shared themes are explored with a greater depth and clarity here. [B+]

“I Can’t Sleep” (1994)
In the hands of near any other director, “I Can’t Sleep” would’ve been boilerplate mystery-procedural fare. In Claire Denis’, it’s a deceptively complex study of sin’s blow-back, its consequences on the sinful and those innocents caught in the crossfire. It’s also a scathing commentary on the poor conditions for immigrants in the ghettos of Paris, developing its mosaic of characters (many played by Denis regulars like Alex Descas and Béatrice Dalle) over a leisurely two hours. Daiga (Katia Golubeva), a tall, wispy Lithuanian beauty, moves in with relatives in Paris. She doesn’t speak much French, and when a radio announcer warns of the “Granny Killer,” she doesn’t understand. But we do. She’s our entry point; we feel just as uprooted as she does in this seedy place, and our understanding of her displacement pays off two-fold when it lends insight into the mind of the killer, an immigrant who shares her frustrations and feelings of alienation. Denis is too smart to create a film rote with cynicism; there are no heroes in “I Can’t Sleep,” but the city fights its own demons, “grannies” take up martial arts to defend themselves, and those with any shred of humanity reach out to others, often in vain. Denis understands that people sin, but knows that they also regret. The title, “I Can’t Sleep,” may suggest that even the gravest offenders lose sleep over their transgressions. [B+]

“Beau Travail” (2000)
This is the imposing masterwork of Claire Denis’ illustrious career—an adaptation of Herman Melville‘s “Billy Budd” which relocates the story’s action to a French legionnaire camp in Northern Africa where jealousy and braggadocio inform an intense power struggle and elevate a classic parable to the level of Greek tragedy. In the opening scene, the film’s two protagonists, Sentain (Gregoire Colin) and Galoup (Denis Lavant), circle each other like predators; the soldiers are established as silent rivals through intense physical gestures: penetrating stares, arched backs and clenched fists. Denis’ surreal rendering of their harsh environment blurs the line between masculinity and an unspoken homoerotic tension, just as it makes ambiguous the separation between regimented exercise and interpretive dance. This director’s cinema is all about suggestion—erotic tension abounds but there’s no release. Denis focuses not on action, but inaction here: the soldiers rehearse tirelessly for a battle that never comes, and that hypothetical threat, looming in some potential future, infuses “Beau Travail” with a wellspring of unnerving tension. But Denis’ interests extend beyond the blows traded between her two brooding ciphers; setting the film in Djibouti hints at the pointed critique of “Chocolat,” her exceptionally underrated debut: that dark-skinned people often become casualties to the senseless whims and conflicts of white egotists. [A]

“Trouble Every Day” (2002)
Unfortunately the title “The Hunger” is taken, but it does a solid job emphasizing the carnal rage with which Denis’ sojourn into more horrific territory is concerned. Along the French countryside, a curvy animalistic nymphomaniac (Béatrice Dalle) can’t help but devour her lovers, held back by the dutiful concern of her male paramour. At the same time, two Americans (Vincent Gallo and uber-cute and underused Tricia Vessey) struggle to understand how they’ve arrived at this place of sensual longing and flesh-eating scientifically, while at the same time struggling with how their passions seem both exactly the same, and, because of a lack of compatibility, completely opposite to their interests. “Trouble Every Day” is a gory test for the average arthouse consumer, but it continues Denis’ sensuous obsession with the matters of the flesh and the chasm that separates even the most dedicated of lovers. It also boasts a solid score by the Tindersticks.[B]

“35 Shots of Rum” (2009)
Working class tensions play out in silence; the scene set by the raindrops on the windowsill, the braying of the local train, the click-clack of glasses filled with merry drink. In this effort, Denis observes the curious, world-less formation of a family brought together partially by blood, partially by employment, but also with the love and generosity of those around you. “35 Shots Of Rum” details the transition, from the ones you love to the ones you will love, when you realize what exactly are the ties that bind. Love is not enough, argues the wonderfully humanist film, but there is beauty in finding a support system, and establishing your niche with hands held, hips swayed, and eyes locked. [A]

…more here.

So, I was invited to a brand new film festival: the Bronze Lens Film Fest: with Say Grace Before Drowning.

I really like it so far because:

They put me at the Marriott Marquee Downtown for two nights: starting tonight.

INT. LOBBY  MARRIOTT MARQUEE

Me: Hi

CLERK: Hello, Nikyatu.  We see here that you requested a KING size bed.

Me: Umm.  Yes.  Yes i did.

CLERK: How many keys would you like?

Me: two?

CLERK (handing over Dora the Explorer enscripted room keys): Have a wonderful stay with us.  The sports bar is located downstairs.

Me: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

My film screens Saturday at Noon.  See ya there maybe?

Los Angeles – The Directors Guild of America today announced the winners of the 2010 DGA Student Film Awards for African American, Asian American, Latino and Women directors.  The awards are designed to honor, encourage and bring attention to outstanding minority and women directors in film schools and select universities across the country.

“Congratulations to all of the awardees for this year’s DGA Student Film Awards,” said DGA President Taylor Hackford.  “As part of the DGA’s commitment to encouraging diversity in the entertainment industry, we’re pleased to recognize these promising young filmmakers as examples of the vital and diverse talent coming from film schools and universities across the country.”

Awesome–I won the honorable mention back in 2007 for African Booty Scratcher. This year I get the Jury Award which means more than a plaque $$$.

Congrats to all the winners and shout out to NYU in the house: we won Jury Awards in 3 categories!