» Bill Cowell, Founder of The Buffalo Niagara
Film Festival is proud to announce a victorious
return for #2.
Bill pledges that this will be a spectacular 2nd year with large events and big
surprises to be talked about for years to come. Enjoyment to all, and to all
an enjoyable plight. See you soon.
Winter
Sea -
Tuesday, March 27th, 10:35pm UB North Campus,
Slee Hall (next to the Center For the Arts)
--Summertime,
and the living is easy--
These are the first words ELLEN, 22, speaks, or rather sings, in 'Winter Sea'.
They express her profound longing for an escape, a way out and freedom: everything
she unconsciously desires, but is still unable to pursue. Reality, though, differs
quite substantially from the lyrics: she sings on a cold Winter night, and her
life is dominated by the intense bonds which link her to her family.
'Winter sea' revolves around Ellen’s intimate relationship to her brother,
which is threatened when an unexpected guest shows up for dinner at their eccentric
mother’s house.
In the course of the night, Ellen is confronted, for the first time, with everyone’s
simultaneous demands on her as well as her own secrets, unveiled, leading her
to discover that what she really needs is to make a decision for herself.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
WINTER SEA is my bourgeois version of a vampire
story. In my short, I was determined to depict
the unbreakable ties of a family-unit which
functions perfectly as long as it is wrapped
in its own self-sufficient world, thus completely
isolated from reality. If Ellen keeps on living
at home, she will be locked in that house for
centuries, never knowing what is outside nor
who she is. It will be nice, but it will never
change, like the tapestry or the wall-paper
in her living room. When do protective relationships
cease to be comforting and all of a sudden
reveal their suffocating quality? More importantly,
the film tries to capture the dynamics between
the seductive, yet at the same time stagnant
character of these relationships. As a story-teller,
I wanted my audience to experience a process
of discovery about what is concealed under
the surface of the film’s narrative thread.
In most families, there is a hidden secret. In most successful films, there is
an underlying, unspoken tension which haunts the characters’ every action,
motion and statement. I was interested in exploring what was not in the words,
but underneath the words: in the pauses, the looks and the silences.
