Hi! You are Currently Being Recorded (2023) [Chattanooga Film Festival 2024]

Dangerous Visions Shorts Block

We traded our privacy for security. And when we lost the privacy and kept the security and realized it didn’t make much of a difference it was too late to get our privacy back. We live in a world where there are cameras everywhere, and everything is taking footage of something going on in the background and foreground. More than ever we’re being viewed through some kind of robotic lens.

And we’ve yet to really prepare ourselves to know how far that rabbit hole goes.

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Interview with “Gunfighter Paradise” Filmmaker Jethro Waters

For our readers, please introduce yourself.
Hello readers, my name is Jethro Waters and I’m the writer and director of the feature film Gunfighter Paradise.  I was born in Austin, Texas, moved to North Carolina at the age of 11, and I now live and work in Manhattan.  I know where to find the best grits & Red-eye gravy in The South, and I also know where to find the best bagels in NYC.  There is a chameleon named Elvis who lives among the plants in my apartment window (seriously) and he’s probably got the best view of any chameleon living in the city.

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Bedroom People (2022) [Film Maudit 2.0]

The new standard for horror entertainment has become the lo-fi, filmed on VCR fodder that had lent something of a realism to even the more outlandish premises. The aesthetic has been used in a lot of facets of horror in the last eight years, including horror movies. The classic ARG aesthetic just works and it works well for the short from skilled animator and concept artist Vivien Forsans entitled “Bedroom People.”

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no more room in hell (2023) [Film Maudit 2.0]

“no more room in hell” is a masterclass in how to make a horror documentary without skimming copyright and licensing fees. Rebecca Shapass directs a de-construction of the Romero movie series by taking a deeper more abstract look at how environmental and ecological elements contributes to the rush of the dead, and the downfall of society. Shapass includes snippets of dialogue from the various scripts and spends a lot of the documentary’s time peeking in to various industries including excavation, as well as the rule of capitalism.

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Nu (2022) [Film Maudit 2.0]

I imagine Olivier Labonté Lemoyne’s is going to lend itself to all kinds of interpretations. Maybe it’s just abstract for the sake of being abstract? Who knows? In either case, “Nu” succeeds in being as oddly creepy as it does in being kind of silly, exploring the idea of fear vulnerability. The whole concept of beings that look like nudists plays on the whole nature of voyeurism and the reluctance by many to engage in it.

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ClearMind (2024)

Now Streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi TV.

Aw hell, I’m always complaining about wanting to see something new and Rebecca Eskreis’ “ClearMind” is something new. It’s such a mixing of genres that it eventually comes out of the other end as this unusual amalgam that’s hard to peg down. I dare you to peg this in one hole. It’s a dramatic science fiction situation comedy about grief that follows a woman who uses virtual reality to become a slasher. There are shades of horror, and satire about new age medicine and the quackery of nonsense like Goop et al. It’s so far and away amorphous that it’s tough to hate it.

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Arena Wars (2024)

Available on VOD June 25th from Gravitas Ventures.

While Edgar Wright and Glen Powell are currently in the process of crafting their remake of “Running Man,” Brandon Slagle jumps to the front of the line to get his hits in first. “Arena Wars” looks great and has a classic idea from the Stephen King novel. In fact, it’s pretty much just a small budget remake of the classic film with convicts, and a game show and psychos, etc. The problem with “Arena Wars” is that is it pretty much a ton of filler with only some semblance of narrative in sparse moments. If “Arena Wars” were a bag of chips it’d only have a small hand full of chips and a ton of smelly air puffing it up.

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