NEW YORK PREMIERE
SYNOPSIS
LOLO is a short film with no dialogue.
The story is of an estranged relationship between mother and daughter. The film is framed by the mother’s memory, and what the mother does not know or cannot understand about the life of her daughter she fills with her worst fears.
In the beginning, a teenage musician, Lolo, is lured away from her unhappy homelife by an older man. After discovering her daughter’s disappearance, Lolo’s mother is surprised by a visitor - the same man who took her daughter. He shows her a policeman’s badge and ostensibly begins to help her look for Lolo, but he is actually taking pleasure in exposing the mother to the uncomfortable truths she never knew about her own daughter. Meanwhile, Lolo is taken on a journey where she is broken down, re-fashioned, and has her passion and her song co-opted before her vital fluids are drained from her in a vacuum bag. The Sinister Man then proceeds to lead Lolo’s mother to the place where she will discover her daughter’s body and confirm her darkest suspicions.
STARRING: Tara Buck, Isabelle Gillette, Jordan Raf, Staz Lindes
RUNTIME: 9 minutes
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
The genesis of the project lies in a tangled nest of ideas and feelings: being in an estranged family, surviving in a society that derives sadistic pleasure from extraction and exploitation, and wishing you could have another moment with someone from your family who has passed on. I found that vampire stories channel these impulses and urges and also have a major relevance to our contemporary social and political landscape.
LOLO is an updated vampire story that incorporates elements of modern conspiracy theories revolving around elite sickos drinking children’s bodily fluids into the framework of a strained mother and daughter relationship. I’m interested in Qanon and pizza gate because I see them as elaborate works of fantasy that have been created by channeling an overwhelming, inchoate sense of alienation, fear and anger into an easily digestible narrative framework, much like horror movies do. These conspiracies are fantasies, they do not describe reality - they twist reality by projecting their repressed wishes upon it; and this is what I wanted to try with, LOLO.
LOLO is a surrealist fantasy with elements of Body horror, influenced by David Lynch, Maya Deren, FW Murnau, David Cronenberg, artists who make films set in a recognizable version of our world, but one which abides by strange rules, populated by recognizable, archetypal figures and capable of making strange connections across time, space and identities.
DIRECTOR: Owynn Kaye
SCREENPLAY: Owynn Kaye
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Ingrid Sanchez
EDITOR: Owynn Kaye
MUSIC: Melody Gun Studios
PRODUCER: Owynn Kaye, Ingrid Sanchez, Matt Johnson
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Owynn Kaye is a director, actor, producer and editor in Los Angeles. His most recent previous film was the feature film EARTH OVER EARTH. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, he is a graduate of Oberlin College and UCLA.