PRODUCTION DATES: October 10-24, 2022
TRT: 3:14
HARDWARE: Sony a7sii, Canon C200, Canon Cinema Zoom lenses
SOFTWARE: Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve
SUBTITLES AVAILABLE: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian & German
FILMED ON LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA USA
FORMATS AVAILABLE: 4k ProRes 422, DCP, all digital files
DIRECTOR’S NOTE: “Poetry today ought to be a bold experiment in the democratic spirit, and the future of poetry is inseparable from the future of democratic politics. A constitution matters even more to poets than to others, because only when the right to expression is guaranteed can one give voice to the hopes of people at large, and only then is progress possible. To suppress the voices of the people is the crudest form of violence.”
—Ai Qing, father of artist Ai Wei Wei, July 1938
I have been extremely concerned about the conspiracy theories, disinformation and outright lies being spread by social platforms, cable networks, and autocratic politicians worldwide. trump’s “Big Lie” that he won the 2020 US presidential election, his incitement of an insurrection against the US Capitol and attempted obstruction of the peaceful transfer of power, the needless deaths of millions around the globe who were anti-mask and/or distrustful of the COVID-19 vaccine, the grift and fraud related to the new anti-science/anti-fact mindset that is affecting global markets, along with the bogus propagation of white supremacist “Replacement Theory”…it’s all been incomprehensibly horrific.
I’ve always wondered if keeping up the myths of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, etc was very beneficial when kids start to question them. Don’t they clock the insistence in these traditions as “the first lie” they were told? And, what do we make of the newscasters who run the ‘Santa’s Progress Reports’ on Christmas Eve, interviewing Air Force generals about ‘the technology used to track the sleigh and reindeer’? In December of 2021, anti-mask/anti-vax Republicans on the floor of the US Congress argued against COVID mitigation policy, saying, “Are we going to ask Santa to wear a mask down the chimney? Will he have to show a vaccine passport to parents before he puts gifts under a tree?” After being subjected to such a performative contortion of reality, I decided it was time to wrap it all into…a rap.
FOR MORE INFO, please contact: dawnwestlake@gmail.com