bio
KULESHOV/BONFIRE is a student graduation short film by Ira Friedberg. It was made in 2022 as part of the Screen Production course at The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
logline
An impromptu trip to an ex’s house, with the goal of exchanging personal belongings and ending communication for good, is bound for fiery disappointment. And that's just the way it has to be.
synopsis
Encouraged by an empty apartment filled with her ex-boyfriend's belongings, Carrie takes an Uber to her once-lover's house to drop his things off, get hers back, and tie a neat bow on what we can only assume was a trying relationship.But when the drive there becomes a tense ordeal in itself, Carrie ribbed with strange questions and insights by her driver, we are primed for a less-than-desired discovery at her ex's house.
Simon has been less than thoughtful, to put it kindly, with Carrie's things.A moment at the beginning of the film inspires a novel framing device: the film is almost entirely shot in split-screen, two widescreen frames side by side. In other films, this is always for a short sequence, and almost always to show two seperate events occurring simultaneously. Whereas here, the device keeps Carrie always at focus, with the
secondary frame used to pick up the various bits of the world, her interlocutors and her surroundings.In a world that keeps pushing Carrie in one direction, and claiming this as ‘the way things have to be’, it begs the question - how does one act in a world that seems predetermined? Does one blindly follow fate's compass, or fight to maintain agency and find another path?
film stills
Behind the scenes
Cast and crew
Carrie | Alicia Langley
Driver | David Ghetti
Ex-boyfriend | Warwick Kennedy
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Written and Directed by Ira Friedberg
Produced by Latifah Jackson-vaughan & Ira Friedberg
Director(s) of Photography | Ada Tuna & Ira Friedberg
First Assistant Director | Brodie Sexton-Clark
Sound Recordist | Latifah Jackson-vaughan
Gaffer | Brodie Sexton-Clark
Editor | Ira Friedberg
Original Music and Vocals by Joel Wilkinson
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Produced with the technical resources of UNSW Sydney.
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Poster design and artwork by Emily Naya.
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© 2022 a-conditional film.