Aesthetik
information
producer, writer and director
currently in post production on DEAD WEIGHT, a short dark drama about being trapped in a relationship that should have ended years ago
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new projects
SOLID STATE [feature]
a personal revenge story, set in Palo Alto, the epicentre of Silicon Valley and the last frontier of the American dream which is more fucked up than its pristine white picketed fenced somewhat homogeneous neighbourhoods would suggest
research includes interviewing, in Palo Alto/Mountain View/Menlo Park big tech/ FAANG engineers and managers (one from Google/ex Apple, the other Meta), a startup guy, a Meta marketeer, electrical and motherboard/semiconductor engineers and a UX designer (November 2024) whilst ingesting Malcolm Harris’s comprehensive Palo Alto: A History of California Capitalism, and the World.
The LA Times said this about Malcolm Harris’s writing—
Malcolm Harris had the good luck to grow up in Palo Alto, a blessed piece of real estate in the American economy, lit by both the sun of Silicon Valley and the rosy sandstone glow of the Stanford University campus. He also had the good luck to make it out alive. In the years Harris attended Palo Alto High, students killed themselves at a rate between four and five times the national average, walking to their deaths on the train tracks that Leland Stanford built to escape the labor unrest of San Francisco more than 100 years earlier.
UNTITLED SYLVIA PLATH PROJECT [short]
a film about when Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes at a drunken party for the St Botolph’s review at the Women’s Union in Falcon’s Yard, passionately quoted his poetry back to him before he roughly kissed her and she responded, with apparent equal passion, by biting him on his cheek so hard that she drew blood
based on her journals, see extract below
And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn’t I, and I stamped and screamed yes, and he had obligations in the next room, and he was working in London, earning ten pounds a week so he could later earn twelve pounds a week, and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off, my lovely red hairband scarf which has weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face.
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previously
starring Ellora Torchia who portrayed the broken heart of my birth mother, Joan, who I never knew (but was given her personal journals by her partner who held her hand when she died at the age of 37) in a single take 6 minute monologue that won three awards, screened in over 20 festivals including premiering at the iconic Chinese Theater at the Hollyshorts Festival in LA, going on to screen at Leeds International Film Festival, screening in the British Shot Film strand and also in London Film week-where we won a prize-with Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner CLOSE
official selections
HollyShorts (Premiere) (Los Angeles, US)*, New Hampshire Film Festival*, Leeds International Film Festival*+**, Norwich Film Festival**, North East Film Festival***; Cinefest (Sudbury, Canada)****, New York Shorts (NYC, US) ****, Burbank (Los Angeles, US), Cornwall, Crystal Palace, DUMBO (NYC), Ealing, Earl’s Court, London Film Week, London Super Shorts, Lonely Seal, Northampton, Oxford, Shorts Not Pants (Toronto, Canada), World Of Film (Glasgow, UK) //Awards Best Film – London Film Week, Best UK Film – London Super Shorts, Best Actor – Cornwall Film Festival //Accreditations *Academy/Oscar qualifying / **BAFTA & BIFA qualifying / ***BIFA qualifying / ****Canada Screen Award qualifying //Online Director’s Library, Director’s Notes
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other projects at earlier stages of development
THE ELECTRICITY IN ME [feature]
a woman believes she’ll be healed from terminal cancer if she reconciles with the son she gave up for adoption
THE COLOR OF OUR MEMORY [short]
a near future drama about editing memory to restart a failing friendship