Director's statement:
I wrote TRAPWORK to critique a society awash in plastic, disposable, electronic junk. I’m interested in not only the environmental implications of consumerism, but also its effects on human consciousness and connection. We are increasingly zombified by electronics that steal attention and autopilot our lives. Our artisanal and social sinews atrophy.
The tension between our humanity and our technology is made vivid through the protagonist Photographer’s unique perspective. The first scene draws us into a body-horror-like aesthetic, with cinematography and sound that bring us into Photographer’s delicate sensorium by making the mundane (buzzing phones, scraping trays, gloopy ketchup) grotesque and irritating. Relief is palpable when Photographer escapes into the brown noise of her darkroom or to play vinyls as she tinkers with cameras… only for Student to spoil her serenity, adding pressure to her bottled-up rage. The tension between the invasion of others’ spaces and the search for peace comes to a strange synthesis in the end, as Photographer finds her soulmate by taking dangerous action and becoming an intruder herself.
With her intense awareness of her surroundings and care for what others overlook, Photographer is an unmoving but eroding rock, buffeted by the flow of 21st-century hyperreality. My muse is my real-life partner, who is on the neurodiversity spectrum and has a different (I’d say richer) experience of the world than neurotypicals, that also makes her vulnerable to the kinds of sensory overload that distress Photographer.
I come to TRAPWORK from a background in documentary. My first (directed and produced) feature, EAT YOUR CATFISH explored communication breakdowns in society and the perspective of a marginalized woman, albeit under very different circumstances. It documented the last years of my mother’s life with ALS and her strained relationships with caregivers including myself. The film competed and won awards at major festivals, aired on POV on PBS, and won the 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary.
I have also won numerous awards as a documentary still photographer and had photographs published by outlets such as The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and PBS Frontline. Like Photographer, the darkroom is my happy place.
I have recently pivoted to narrative and experimental filmmaking to expand the range of possibilities and creativity in my storytelling. My (written, directed, edited) short PRETEND I’M NOT HERE, about a gender nonbinary Spanish-English interpreter who finds themselves translating for their own estranged mother, has been selected for festivals including Raindance, Crested Butte, and Leeds over the past year. My dance film (as director, producer, cinematographer, and editor) KASSIA SOUND ICON, a meditation of the life and music of the earliest woman composer with extant works, premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival.
With TRAPWORK, I hope to tell a story that makes viewers think and feel in equal measure, and that proves my ability to entertainingly dissect social issues and illuminate under-considered perspectives across film genres.
