We are moving stories

“I decided to make this film when someone made an assumption about me and my life based on my social media accounts. Upon scrolling through my own wall to determine why that was, I realised that I had inadvertently created a persona for myself that although still true, it was only one piece of who I truly am.

By putting myself in someone else’s shoes and looking at my own profile, I started to make assumptions about myself based on what I saw. It was an interesting exercise and I wanted to explore that further in a film. So Curated Illusions was born and I hope that it inspires other to look from the outside in as well.”

“In times of social media, how do you find someone for real? Someone to be with? How do you know that person is the right one when you’re only a swipe away from the next? I wanted to investigate that feeling of being so close to love and then throw it away again hoping to find something better.”

“The audience should watch this film solely to see that we have all been through heartbreak and know what it is like to have someone rip out your heart and basically just stomp it to s**t. In all honesty, making the film had helped me overcome a breakup myself, and after receiving a pre-final cut of the film by the other editor, I realized how the themes of love, trust, and closure truly play out in the film.”

“As an audience member I try to take them on a bit of a journey, by examining the lives of different people who are not really connecting with one another. I would like people to see this because it asks questions about our relationships with people in the age of social media. I really think it’s making an important statement.”

“I have an eccentric friend who lives in New York City who has been obsessed with squirrels and politics, but never in the same breath...until this happened. She told me how she had trained squirrels to come in through her window, walk through her apartment and go out her garden door. She fed squirrels in the park, watched YouTube videos of squirrels and eventually joined the biggest Squirrel Page on Facebook. During the pandemic, everything intensified while we were indoors on our social media. One day a civil war broke out and it was led by my friend! I knew I had to tell the story.”

“I am always looking for films that are different, so I tried to do something different, and perhaps I’d invite the audience to do so, to move out of the ‘safe zone’ as viewers as I explore the possibilities out of the ‘safe zone’ as a filmmaker. When we get what we expect, the level of satisfaction is lower.”

“I have made several films about social media and how they promote and corrupt democracy at the same time. When I got to know about the infamous Russian troll factory in Saint Petersburg, where young people for money male fake profiles and produce fake stories, I knew I have to make a film about this “new” phenomena.”

“On social media, more of us are projecting our ‘best selves’ in an incessant hunt for more ‘likes’, getting caught up in dubious entertainment black holes, and forming impressions of the world through the filter of social media.

On the other hand, social media is a powerful tool that allows us to hear new voices, express ourselves, and connect with, understand and celebrate each other in unprecedented ways. We ask our viewers where we draw the line between entertainment versus voyeurism, intimacy versus over-sharing and belonging versus being detached from reality.”

“RATED is an extremely engaging dramedy, more about our humanness than the stars themselves. The film speaks to that deeply human need to be liked and how we wrestle with that need in everyday life. So relevant today with our positive or negative obsession to rate everything from our favorite restaurant, to a park, to our dentist.”

“This struck me as a high-concept-ish story that could work well as a short. The idea of a mass-market, mind-connected smartphone, and you’re the one Luddite who missed the memo. Just a few hours of raw, unfiltered thoughts on social media would certainly ruin your life. I just started riffing from there.”

“My husband Brian and I were sophomores in college when Facebook first launched in 2004. Over the years, we’ve watched social media evolve from connecting with friends to sharing what you had for breakfast to asking 3,500 Instagram followers if you should or should not move to France. Made Public was born out of our curiosity about why we do this and how far this trend might go. Rather than asking these questions outright, we disguise them in this lighthearted dramedy that hopefully sucks you in and makes you both laugh and cringe along the way.”

“The universal theme in my one-minute film is the humor and horror of social media. Scrolling through your feed you’ll start to notice people trying to all look alike, influencers trying to do the most daring things to get a like, content creators trying to make you laugh for a comment. It’s this big virtual, funny world that is also really scary in some aspects and it can feed on your soul, your self-esteem, your humanity. I try to poke fun at that fact but also not try to stuff a lesson down your throat.”

“Our heroes, if you can call them that, Emelia and Brody desperately want to be insta-famous. They are always one post away from gaining the traction they need to get there. Just one more perfectly centered photo of their soft scrambled eggs and thick-cut bacon away from their dream.

It’s not real. We’re following two characters whom we have all seen in real life. They have everything they need and want right in front of them. If only they could put their phones away.”

“It was in researching possible solutions to my own situation that I came across Dr. Sher’s contest. This competition struck me as a perfectly absurd distillation of the overwhelming world of reproductive medicine in which I found myself; I knew right away that this was a film I had to make.”

“Aside from being guilty of undervaluing myself personally, I see how, with the onslaught of social media, body shaming has become a global epidemic. It’s hard to grow up in a culture where so much emphasis is based on how you look. If our ‘ideals’ - the women and men we see in ads and magazines - have to be photoshopped beyond recognition, then how are we supposed to feel comfortable about being just ‘us’?”

“People of color cheered and gave us a standing ovation during the premiere in Amsterdam. For me, the film was a success because I wanted them to feel heard. White people came up to me and say the movie did confront them. They suddenly realized that they had ‘accidentally’ been racist in a certain situation and are now aware of it.”

“As a filmmaker, I want to not only entertain people, but make them stop, think, and reflect. The film is very much an extension of the Harvey Weinstein Casting Couch at its core. Both the film and the art installation use satire and social commentary to incite a conversation about sexual assault in Hollywood so it checked off all the boxes.”

“BIG MEN, SMALL DOGS (CBC Short Docs) went viral with over a million views in the first few weeks of its release.”

“We want everyone who feels discriminated or mistreated to hump away all bad things and feel better. Imagine a worldwide army of “humpers” taking no shit and spreading love! Also. we want Beyonce to see it so she hires Juck for her next thing!”

“The speech was written overnight after the Opening Day of the conference in which no women appeared on the main stage. The Digital Humanities aspires to do better than this and there are so many great women in this field. Given this, I was flabbergasted by both the lack of women and then also the failure to explicitly address their absence in any way. So I took the opportunity of my appearance on-stage – I was introducing the next day’s keynote speaker – to offer some thoughts on how the field could tackle diversity and inclusion in a practical way. ”

“We’re witnessing an unprecedented decline in empathy at a time of rising economic disparity and inequality; at a time when we need empathy and social engagement the most. But what we’re increasingly seeing is the opposite. For the most part, there’s a mass withdrawal into the world of the screen, into a world of distraction and sugar treats in the form of Likes, cat videos and meme GIFs. Let’s just go shopping again, you know?”