Welcome to the Bunker Age:_this breath is not mine to keep: Cycles is an experimental short drama about our collective grief and loss for a way of life, a planet, and a future imagined that may never be seen. In a concrete tomb on a decimated planet powdered milk and toilet paper are more central to our existence than trees and running water. Watching our demise with apathetic disinterest as our denial finally turns to shock, will it be too late to make a difference?
Producers: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell, Piri Eddy
Director: Johanis Lyons-Reid
Writers: Johanis Lyons-Reid & Piri Eddy
Actors: Benjamin Tamba and Jamila Main
Production Company: Change Media [find full credits below]
Country: Australia
Year: 2020
Duration: 6’32
Click here to download the Electronic Press Kit.
Festivals Update:
Cycles has been selected to screen at the prestigious St. Kilda Film Festival 2021, as part of Australia’s Top 100 Shorts Selection. Congratulations to all involved!
Tagline:
In a concrete tomb on a decimated planet powdered milk and toilet paper are more central to our existence than trees and running water.
Short Synopsis:
Welcome to the Bunker Age:_this breath is not mine to keep: Cycles is an experimental short drama about our collective grief and loss for a way of life, a planet, and a future imagined that may never be seen. Watching our demise with apathetic disinterest as our denial finally turns to shock, will it be too late to make a difference?
Jamila Main in _this breath is not mine to keep: Cycles. Photo by Piri Eddy. ©2020 Change Media
Longer Synopsis:
Capturing the heart of a global anxiety, _this breath is not mine to keep: Cycles (6’32, 2020), is built around ten imagined stages of grief, with surreal visual representations of each. Apocalyptic vignettes reflect on the mundane horrors of living on the other side of catastrophe, and an inability to contextualise life-shattering change. In a concrete tomb on a decimated planet powdered milk and toilet paper are more central to our existence than trees and running water.
With languid fluidity, the experimental short film explores notions of loss, despair and absurdity through a mesmerising visual language, juxtaposing liminality, climate catastrophe and claustrophobic spaces, inhabited by two young people struggling to come to terms with a new apocalyptic ‘normal’.
_this breath is not mine to keep is a collaborative, conceptual work led by Change Media’s co-founders Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell. The work interrogates how everyday supremacy thinking manipulates our emotions, conceals systemic injustice and sabotages acts of solidarity. Cycles is a collaborative response as part of the wider project, comprising of an experimental short film as looped video installation and soundscape, to explore notions of loss and cyclic renewal in an ‘Bunker Age’ of entombment and nostalgia.
Globally we are witnessing the extinction of our world, and yet we continue to fuel our demise, so how do we notice our involvement, disrupt the stasis and rewrite the rules
Benjamin Tamba in _this breath is not mine to keep: Cycles. Photo by Piri Eddy. ©2020 Change Media
Credits:
Cast: Benjamin Tamba and Jamila Main
Writer/ Director/ DoP/ Editor: Johanis Lyons-Reid
Writer/ Producer: Piri Eddy
Producers: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell
Art Department: Emma Hough Hobbs
Standby Props/Costumes: Ainsley Ewart
Gaff: Tim Carlier
1st Assistant Camera: David Tang
2nd Assistant Camera: Bec Taylor
Hair and Make-up: Ashleigh Richardson
Recordist: Tom Wroblewski
Sound design, music + mix: Justin Pounsett
Stills Photography: Piri Eddy
Jamila Main in _this breath is not mine to keep. Photo by Piri Eddy. ©2020 Change Media
Director’s statement (Johanis Lyons-Reid, director/ DOP/ editor)
Cycles is at its heart a short film, which portrays a diversity of experience through a collaborative filmmaking process, inviting ideas from cast and crew to represent a multitude of apocalyptic narratives. Cycles explores ideas of liminality, and how quickly the mundane can become horrific. Early on the idea of playing with time, and slowing moments down to infinitesimal blocks became very alluring. There was also a desire to play with elemental materials, as a newly imagined pantheon of elements.
I was inspired to be a part of ‘_this breath is not mine to keep’, because I found the idea of grieving for our planet both absurd and deeply unsettling. It captures the heart of a global anxiety, that something we take for granted is changing and will be lost within our lifetime. That we may be watching our own demise with apathetic disinterest, and when our denial finally turns to shock it will be too late to make a difference.
Jamila Main and Benjamin Tamba in _this breath is not mine to keep. Photo by Piri Eddy. ©2020 Change Media
Sound designer statement - Justin Pounsett
I was drawn and keen to contribute to ‘_this breath is not mine to keep’, because of the scope, breadth and diversity of all the works - but mainly because of the urgent and pertinent nature of its overarching narrative. The notion that we might ‘grieve’ our own annihilation is clearly absurd, but unsettlingly real. How this is reflected and communicated through the soundscapes we produced was extremely engaging. An open brief can often be tricky to navigate, but working closely with Johanis and his clarity with his visual content makes the process far more fluid and focused.
Early on in the process of producing ‘Cycles’ the clear path of using the ultra-slow motion vision to create unsettling soundscapes was obvious. Either hyper-realistic or stylised was yet to be seen. The breakdown of brief moments in time into agonising visceral sequences allows the soundscape to be broken into intricate layers that are always hidden to us. The physical nature of slowing down sound naturally creates the typical, almost demonic low pitched tones and textures. These are always instantly unsettling and foreign to us. How Johanis explained it as “how the quickly mundane can become horrific”, I think is elegant.
The opportunity to craft something unique presented itself in creating textures outside of these frequencies and tones, textures that wouldn’t naturally exist in this space. Layering more emotional information in the sonic space gave it much more impact and interest.
What I love about slowing down these moments in time so much, is you are forced to think about, feel and ultimately engage or empathise with that exact moment in time. Some say that time might slow at the moment of our own individual demise - I think there is something very transcendental about that.
And a big thanks to our funders, supporters and community partners:
This initiative has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the South Australian Government through Arts SA, with additional support from the Adelaide Hills Council, Alexandrina Council, Nexus Arts and the City of Victor Harbor.
Click here to find out more about _this breath is not mine to keep.
