Spaceships Over Portland (short film, 2007)

Forgot I ever made this, a little disturbing since it was only 4 years ago. Found it out of the blue today and there were some notes I'd posted online. According to these notes, "The "lack of faces" was a choice, mimicking that faceless authoritarian tone of the anthropological-observer/1950s instructional films the short is loosely based on."

The same year (again, 2007), I finished a feature screenplay that was using some of the same techniques of, hmm, what I called purposeful cognitive dissonance i.e. showing one thing, talking about something else. It was called Spaceships Over Corvallis and there was the same alien/alien tension, except in the feature film, it was extraordinary rendition of U.S. terror suspects and the Cold War of 1962.

This short was made to see how that disconnect would function (kind of like an artist's sketch) - the intended effect being a spooky disorientation that still got the point across. I think it probably could work on a bigger scale...!

One of the freed chimps resting in the sun. (from an article in the Mirror)





Chimpanzees freed after 30 Years as Lab Animals
September 8, 2011 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized


"This is the moment a group of chimpanzees sees daylight for the first time in 30 years – after being locked in cages for medical testing.
The animals hugged each other in delight before they took their first steps outside.

Emotional footage, below, shows how they reacted to their new surroundings.

The outing marked the end of a 14-year bid to re-integrate the 38 primates after they spent most of their lives cooped up inside. " (from anthropology.tv)