Where do we go from here?
That seems to be the driving question of the Long Distance Film Festival’s centerpiece program, titled Present. A product of the early COVID-19 quarantine, the festival finds itself now questioning not just what comes next, but where we came from, and what we will have to deal with afterwards, through the programs Past, Present, and Future. The Present program focuses on our current moment and the bizarro encounters that we have come to refer to as “interconnectedness” over the course of the pandemic. Especially as the US begins a slow and likely arduous re-opening, and a light seems to be on the horizon, the offerings of the program become all the more heartbreaking in their examination of where we are and what comes next.
Perhaps the most intense, and yet effective, of the slate of shorts is Salt, a “psychosexual mini-thriller” circling a drug deal delivery man and his intimidating customer. The two enter a psychological dance, each trying to gain the upper hand on the other in the course of the deal, containing moments of palpable sexual tension and moments where control shifts between characters. When considered alongside our own pandemic experience, where deliveries marked the total sum of exterior social interaction for a large number of people, the film takes on a darkly comic tone as well. Salt underscores the surreal nature of human emotion in the time of COVID by putting on full display the boilerplate of feelings that many have found no outlet for in isolation.
The program becomes more interior as it moves on, with shorts like A Quiet Declaration of Independence, 1 Bottle of Wine, and existing is a bitch rn exposing the individual weight of handling the pandemic. A Quiet Declaration focuses on one woman’s realization of the social pressures of following tradition as she sets up for a solo holiday party, and 1 Bottle of Wine captures the weight of grief and fear that many have had to push away in the face of a “new normal” as animator Anne Isensee challenges herself to drink an entire bottle of wine and draw a film. The result is a lonely Insensee sobbing over the fear she has for her loved ones amidst the pandemic. It’s a personal piece that strikes a chord for those who have spent the past lonely year in fear of their family members and grandparents.
existing is a bitch rn is even more specific, capturing the intersecting anxieties of gender identity, dysphoria, and loneliness in a bizarro CG animation stripped down to bare essentials. A blue being laments their misperceived body to a hand-drawn angular yellow one, drawing a larger, plumper shape to match how they feel they must look. The yellow being insults the blue for the fleeting thought of purchasing something that might make them happy, instead shaming them for engaging with consumerism and not being “sustainable.” An inter-title reading “I just want to hug my friends” becomes more and more abstracted as the character watches a blur of vague humanoid forms through windows, as they pass through each other and separate again. The moment captures a specific feeling of watching others break pandemic protocols, encapsulating the justifiable fury and unspeakable jealousy that infects our responses to such events. existing is a bitch rn feels like the most raw offering of the Present program, encapsulating an innumerable list of anxieties and the contradictions of disjoined, isolating living and addressing the crucial conceit of cinema at this moment in time: “You will watch this on your computer. The communal aspect of film does not exist at the moment. It is impossible to separate any media that exists right now from COVID.”
The festival does not solely consist of these frankly devastating pieces, and offers its own perspective of hopefulness as the program progresses. Forever turns the fear of AI that many are familiar with on its head, using experimental animation and powerful voiceover by director Mitch McGlocklin to tell the story of an alcoholic who finds himself adrift after failing to qualify for a life insurance policy via AI determination. The film, made using LiDAR technology, explores the man’s journey towards healing, fueled by a cautious optimism that feels an entirely contrary, yet welcome, interpretation of the relationship between man and AI that has fueled so much speculative fiction. In Forever, the AI that has exempted the man from a life insurance policy is equal parts foreboding in its ability to make such large decisions about human lives; and comforting, as the man begins to view the ever-watchful AI as a guardian angel, perhaps something that might even dare to hope that he could be better.
Non-human relationships form their own subcategory of the program, exploring the other kinds of social bonds we can or have formed under pandemic restrictions. Neko is an experimental film about a cat, exploring the unique bond many of us formed with new pets over quarantine, as well as the identity of the pets themselves. It seems we are always learning about each other, even at a distance. My Dear Quarantine is a love story about the early months when animals roamed the streets.
The most optimistic and openly joyous offering is Flying Turtle, a charming exploration of the impact meme culture can have as images circulate. Amidst companion shorts that deeply probe ideas of personhood and tradition, Flying Turtle is a brilliantly colored palate cleanser that opts instead to explore the power of social media and its ability to spread popular symbols. It draws on the internet’s history of images such as the infamous Loss comic, or even the recent “amogus” meme, where people posted images of any real world object that resembled the Crewmate characters from Among Us. These memes usually come steeped in irony, with Loss poking fun at a decades old webcomic that swung far darker in tone than the rest of the comic’s strips, while “amogus” arose as a reaction to the explosion of popularity of the game Among Us, fueled by mocking the player base and the game solely for being popular. Flying Turtle imagines the process in complete sincerity, perhaps drawing greater comparison to the recent Bernie Sanders meme from the Biden inauguration in January, as the image of a “flying turtle” posted to social media spins into a worldwide symbol seen everywhere from child’s classroom drawings to branded coffee shops. The short is optimistic about what our relationship with technology means, in a sense that is oddly comparable to Forever, that reminds us of the joy that can be found in sharing memes with our friends, even stuck in separate rooms hundreds of miles apart. It would be a sheer lack of responsibility to not mention IMG_3505, an iPhone video of a seagull attempting to eat a chicken wing, that covers much of the same ground in a far more literal sense.
The program finds it closing in Peeps, a hilarious short about five teenage schoolgirls and the secrets they keep from each other, as well as what they share. It lacks the same weighted physical isolation that many of the shorts feature, being set in an Australian mall crowded with people talking and gathering freely. However, it highlights a unique sense of isolation that seems fitting considering its finality in the centerpiece program, and the interactions between the festival itself and a COVID-19 world. The girls’ secrets revealed by the language of the birds, we watch as they slowly isolate themselves from each other with the goal of placing themselves higher in the social pecking order. Its context may seem foreign to us now, but the message is the same: isolation is not a new problem. Isolation will remain, even if not legally enforced, unless the way we communicate with others fundamentally changes alongside the reopening of our society.
Overall, the Present program highlights the strange in our current interpersonal interactions, often focusing less on communication itself than the odd avenues communication can take. Peeps uses the “language of birds,” Salt uses body language contradictory to the scene’s action, Flying Turtle uses its eponymous image, existing is a bitch rn uses vocoded, inhuman voiceover. Interdimensional Pizza Pushers even goes as far as to swap dimensions and animation styles to exemplify the way in which forms of communication shift and change, especially now. When it comes to any new or upcoming media from this point on, the lens of the pandemic will always be front and center for many audiences. Similarly, many creators will likely begin to create their own “pandemic works” that attempt to address the maelstrom of isolation and emotion we have all undergone in the past year. Some will fail, and some may succeed; but not without the necessary online discourse debating whether or not it’s worth addressing the pandemic, or if it’s even possible to do so successfully. Long Distance Film Fest’s centerpiece proves that it is, indeed, possible, and does so to such a degree that the whole of the program becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Much like the majority of its slate, the Present program becomes its own form of communication, as well: a far-reaching octopus, finding home and heart in every individual experience we may have had during the pandemic.
