![]() ![]() LD: I wanted it to at least look on the surface like an ’80s horror film. It makes sense when you say you started thinking of it as a graphic novel. ![]() Eventually I got into really trashy horror, shot-on-video horror, and things that had a certain look to them with impressionistic textures that I wanted to play with.ĬC: I want to hear more about how the look of the film came together. The surreal and beautiful imagery of an ocean filled with blood had a deep impact on me as a teenager. I got obsessed with Lilith and how Evangelion adapted her into this existential alien metaphor for the human condition. In middle school I was a big fan of anime, specifically Neon Genesis Evangelion, and that’s what introduced me to the concept of Lilith. The menstrual cycle was not a narrative element yet (you can thank Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell and anything Cronenberg for inspiring that). Something where sex was a vampiric experience. I'd had this idea of a girl with some sort of sexual ailment, a supernatural thing. LD: It started as a sci-fi dystopian comic book I never finished in middle school. Then I began writing Video Diary in 2009. It kinda became a scrapbook of the weirdo Orlando punk scene at the time, kinda like Downtown 81 is to the post-punk art scene in New York. We would shoot different formats-Super 8, digital, VHS-because I wanted it to feel like a collage. And then I made another short film with called Chances about two of my performance-art friends that went by the name Triscults (Jill Shea and Brittany Morris) two dancing masked beings of chaos, similar to Vera Chytilova’s Daisies, or like two escaped dancing convicts from the Pee Wee Herman universe. After that my style focus started to change to a more arts-and-crafts-heavy type of filmmaking. He was the cinematographer, and together we looked to the works of filmmakers George Kuchar Guy Maddin, and Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre for inspiration. I kind of made normal-ish films until I did this mermaid horror movie called Wet Skin with Chris. Lindsay Denniberg: Before SAIC, I got more of my film education at UCF, University of Central Florida. I wondered what your filmmaking experience was up to that point? Pris McEver and Chris Shields in Video Diary of a Lost GirlĬristina Cacioppo: You made Video Diary of a Lost Girl while you were still a student at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In advance of tonight’s screening, Denniberg and I spoke about what it took to make a detail-obsessed movie and what its lifespan has been since its release. Work like this, lacking distribution, is always in danger of getting lost to time, so with the tenth anniversary rolling around, it was ripe to revisit. Throughout the years I’ve heard from many people who attended and continue to hold the movie in high regard. We screened it in January of 2013, with Denniberg attending along with co-writer/star Chris Shields and star Pris McEver, and the response was enthusiastic. I was immediately impressed-it had a visual style I hadn’t seen before, quoting from many genres and eras of film but never defaulting to mimicry. We had some mutual acquaintances, and she was looking for an NYC venue after having shown the film at several festivals, including Chicago Underground. Just about ten years ago, when I was a programmer for 92YTribeca, Lindsay Denniberg reached out about her feature Video Diary of a Lost Girl(2012). The Outskirts is a column and screening series by programmer Cristina Cacioppo that looks at films that merit cult status, which have fallen into obscurity and exist outside the categorical.
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