A new short film is in production and seeks to explore themes of human connection and queerness through the intersecting stories of five different people.
From writer and director Kait Ziegler comes "Before Night," a film currently engaged in an Indiegogo campaign in order to complete funding. The project explores the nuances of a variety of stories of love, sex, loss and healing and the ways in which human beings engage in connecting with one another.
"I wanted all of the stories to be left open in terms of the sexual identity of their characters, so that someone may relate more fully to a story without the usual caveat of a character's heterosexual identity," Ziegler told The Huffington Post.
Check out an interview with Ziegler below to develop a more well-rounded perception of "Before Night" and head here to visit the Indiegogo campaign.
The Huffington Post: What is your overarching concept/vision for this project?
Kait Ziegler: The film is about extreme thoughtfulness in how you connect to different people and moments in life. One person's life can sometimes feel so similar to another person's life, days, difficulties, etc. And yet we can also feel very alone at the same time. Exploring that juxtaposition of creating something unique and special out of something usually overlooked and commonplace -- that is something which feels really beautiful to me.
In what ways are you trying to explore human connection through this film?
I want to to explore how emotional, physical, sexual and inward/outward connection can become more intimate, elongated and more authentically weird. The film also creates a space for the grief and solitude we must experience when someone finds an absence of human connection.
How are you trying to elevate stories that are queer and ethnically diverse through this film? Why is this important to you?
I wanted all of the stories to be left open in terms of the sexual identity of their characters, so that someone may relate more fully to a story without the usual caveat of a character's heterosexual identity. Two of the five stories in the film are specifically queer, where one story between two men takes a different approach at defining sexual attraction, physical intimacy and what eroticism motivates within us. The other story tells a familiar school age love story, but between two girls. Creating a story that introduced exploration and being comfortable with sexual identity at a much earlier age was very important to me. If I had ever been able to watch a movie which showed girls in elementary school liking each other and that being totally normal, I probably would have come out a much younger age. Being a woman, a minority and also queer provides a lot of personal objectives in terms of creating an ethnically diverse cast, and also needing to write stories about queer identities. So many people are being exposed to incredible stories but are not being represented equally in terms of ethnicity and identity -- anything I can do to balance out the proportion of marginalized stories to non-marginalized, I want to try and do.
What do you want people to take away from this project?
I would love if a moment in one of the stories resonated truthfully and surprisingly to someone watching and made them feel validated or inspired to take a closer look at why and how we connect to one another. We live in a chaotic, modern world that is full of so many options for "connecting" and providing experiential platforms for expressing our feelings. I want the film to provide the option for connecting with people in a slower, more private and individual fashion. I hope that someone sees the film as an invitation to slow down and open up to experiencing life and the connections that accompany it, however sad, strange, or unique.
Head here to check out the Indiegogo campaign for "Before Night."