Filmmaker Note:

A swell can be defined as “a long often massive and crestless wave or succession of waves often continuing beyond or after its cause” or as something “(especially of a part of the body) become[s] larger or rounder in size, typically as a result of an accumulation of fluid” or “a full or gently rounded shape or form.” In “In the Field There is Swell,” I experiment with language use to distort traditional meanings of certain words or phrases and tropes, and here in particular, that of a swell, typically associated with descriptions of water or bodies of water.

This short film can be thought of as a poem with three verses in which a figure, myself, enters the frame, and seemingly doing not really anything at all, moves around awkwardly, almost attempting at times to move; uncomfortable and silly.

What is a body? What is a queer body? How might a queer body interact with space? What would this space look like? In a blue void a figure moves. In a blue void a queer figure moves. In a blue void a queer figure moves whilst wearing ridiculous (re-dyke-culous?) clothing, language and words interacting with the blue void, with the slow gentle music, within the space and its spacelessness and thus bodilessness; each silly phrase or word slowly taking on new and different and strange meanings. What does it mean to work?

I think in many ways this film has become about slowing down. When I initially began editing, the track I had composed was not quite long enough and thus I slowed it down by 50%, creating a sort of haunting, melodic, American Western-esqu e track that thumps and twangs and hums and groans, toying with the first clip of a “cowboy” shooting a gun at the camera, at the viewer.
Further, each verse has also been slowed down as well; the body’s movements becoming choppy, meaningless, and liminal; as if a delay between the body and the act of seeing the body has occurred.