Short Experimental Documentary
Medium: Ball Point Pen & Archival Footage

LOGLINE

An experimental documentary short which through hand-drawn animation and archived home videos, tells the story of a young girl struggling with her memories of childhood which was marred by the monsters that haunted her nightmares.

​

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

(Originally written for an interview with Vincenzo Nappi for the Concordia Film Festival)

This is one of the first projects I have created with the intent of showing it to a broader audience. I worked tremendously hard to saturate every second of "Enfant Effrayé" with a strong aesthetic and meaningful storytelling choices to represent the passion and distinctive style I have as a filmmaker. "Enfant Effrayé" is an experimental documentary about my childhood nightmares and the way they’ve affected how I experience nostalgia. The animation included has been completely hand-drawn with rotoscoping techniques using my personal home videos. "Enfant Effrayé" was an attempt to showcase how one might yearn to be a kid again, regardless of the reality of childhood itself. Although it is a darker film, I was very happy creating it and it provides some comfort knowing that maybe my nightmares as a little girl are finally acquiring meaning and worth.

​

My decision to incorporate rotoscope animation was definitely connected to the mutability of memories. I’ve always found homevideos to have a certain eerie quality to them. Aesthetically,  I’m completely enthralled by the graininess and imperfections of the footage, but what makes home movies unsettling to me is that so many people have a variation of the same video, capturing the same exact milestone in which they over joyously star in a role they’ll never remember playing. Nostalgia makes things seem like they were perfect but, you grow up and realize that it might not have been the case. I wanted to expand on my own home videos in a way that broadened the story, and I did so by infecting the frames with my somewhat gothic hand drawn art style. I definitely want to solidify my memories and experiences in a way I remember them while artistically dissolving my VHS-captured childhood among the monsters that took over my life while growing up.