Q: Your Filmmaker's Note for the Brooklyn Film Festival, where Living Reality premiered in New York, says this: "In my work, I like to subvert familiar tropes and cliches to explore darker themes that are rarely expressed in media. This film was made to give viewers the opportunity to question why they watch television, and to explore the deeper purpose that television serves in their lives." What is it about exploring darker themes in media that interests you, and why do you think questioning why you watch something is important?

A: I think we all have pretty dark minds with dark thoughts, but just due to the obvious nature and implications of living in a society we can’t really act or speak about a lot of them. This reflects in our popular media. We can handle a little edge, but it can never go too far. I think a lot of the TV shows I watched growing up were representations of what people wanted society to be, rather than how it actually is. I only make art to express myself and my internal feelings (you gotta let it out somehow), so if I’m feeling sad or depressed, I have to put it in my work. I have no other choice. Otherwise I’m doing the same thing as the people who are making our popular media.

I think questioning why we watch something is important too because then we get to unlock our psychological impulses of why these specific mediums exist. I think we like movies for two reasons: Firstly, because they are reflections of ourselves mirrored back onto us, and they allow us as human beings to understand ourselves a bit better. When we watch a rom com, they make us think about how we would act in these specific scenarios, or our current relationships. But also secondly, because they’re entertainment. Back when movies first started, books, painting, and theater were the closest thing we had to immersive entertainment. But when movies came around, they ate up all the cultural real estate from those other mediums, because they make two hours feel like you just had a great dream, as opposed to feeling every minute of two hours went by (good movies I’m referring to in this instance). It’s a pastime that works so well that created a multi-billion dollar industry.

So at least for me as a filmmaker, it gives me a greater understanding of what audiences are looking for in their on-screen media, which really helps me when I create something. But overall, I think it helps to be a little more self aware, otherwise you’re just a pleasure-seeking mammal who just indulges because they feel like it (which we all still are, don’t worry). I’m addicted to movies so I think after a certain amount of time in my addiction I needed to break down why I liked them so much, and I think that’s just a particular thing I’m really interested in.

Q: You co-founded the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival. Can you tell us more about the founding of this festival, what led you to form it with your co-founders, and its mission?

At the point when we started the festival, me and my close collaborator and friend Aidan Cronin had been to a few different festivals, and quickly learned how important they can be to foster community and artistic growth, particularly for those who aren’t exposed to that many films. We both went to Ithaca College in Ithaca NY, and while there are a couple film festivals up there, none of them felt that accessible to us as students (in terms of the programming). We wanted to create a film festival specifically for films that are more unique, subversive, DIY, and personal. So we had our other close friend and collaborator Desirée Tolchin come on board, and we started the festival. Our overall goal was to make something that we would’ve really wanted and been excited for when we were in film school. The only way you can learn how to be a filmmaker is by watching the people that came before you and seeing how they navigated their own artistic paths, so you know what to do and what not to do. I truthfully believe that.

I also just like watching movies so programming is really fun!

Q: Your trailer for “Living Reality” is excellent, and reminiscent of commercials for the sitcoms your film subverts. In the making of this trailer, you seem to think about the media beyond the media, how not only the audience engages with the movie (for example), but how the movie engages with the real world. Can you talk more about that?

Dang you’re about to make me sound really pretentious. Bear with me on this one. I guess my answer to that would be that I’m not interested in making “movies” like the way we’re used to them. In the way of, like a movie would start and the camera is pointing at a character and then another character comes in and they start talking and now we’re in a scene. Like movies. I’m more interested in constructing a reality. So like in this instance, it’s fully committing to the idea that Living Reality is a real sitcom. The film starts and ends like a real sitcom. Some weird stuff happens in the middle that changes your perception of the reality you’re used to, but overall I want it to feel like a piece of lost media that you’re just discovering for the first time So using the guise of a sitcom, or a kids show, or found footage, or whatever it is, makes the audience engage with it on a different plane than just it being a “movie”. We like movies, we’re used to watching movies, but I feel like we’re getting to a place with Twitch Streamers and Tik Tokkers becoming our entertainers that there needs to be an element of reality baked into our entertainment to make it especially believable for audiences. I’m obsessed with the notion that people thought Blair Witch Project was real when it came out in 1999, and that’s what ultimately made it really scary for people. I think I’m always just chasing that. I think that’s also the reason why docufiction and autofiction are really on the rise as well, it’s cooler when it’s real! We know movies are fake at this point, (but sometimes it’s still really fun to buy into them).