Trailer 00:53min
Because We Bleed14min, 2023, color, eng, DE
written and directed Andrea Grambow & Joscha Kirchknopf
cinematography Juri Kirchknopf
starring Beaujangless
music Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst
SFX make Up Ashley Besh
sounddesign, mix Florian Kontny
color grading Jonny Schupp, Andrea Grambow
special thanks Marc Laube, Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, Lena Schnekenburger,
Cat Corrigan, Jason Mirchandani, Annemarie Benzing, David Prior, Jen Lee
An unknown entity, discovers the human world in a nocturnal car ride through Los Angeles, observing people at the side of the street and listening to their stories.
The film mixes the journey of a fictional character, an unknown entity played by drag performance artist Beaujangless, with documentary roadside encounters in a nocturnal car ride through the 'City of Angels’. Observations of people passing by, accompanied by an AI-generated voice-over reciting first-person narratives from interviews, intertwine with sequences of the main character dancing to Holly Herndon's song 'Frontier'.
With the short film 'Because We Bleed', Andrea Grambow and Joscha Kirchknopf explore narratives as both center and limit of human world experience and self-awareness, the concept of an immortal human soul in neo-religious, dataist times, as well as the USA as a collective narrative of capitalist superiority in decay. 'Because We Bleed' is a meditation on storytelling and a poetic journey into a new, dark age.
'Because We Bleed' is currently on display at festivals all around the globe, from Beijing to Bucharest to Bremen or Berlin (and also in cities without a capital B of course).
“We are calibrated to think of darkness as a place of danger. Shadows in the dark that we think of as a dangerous counterpart rather than a harmless stone. And evolution has rewarded us for our imaginations: We animate the darkness that surrounds us with the stories of our fear. Shadows that follow or precede us. Our past that seems to lead us as if on rails or our destiny that seems to inevitably pull us in its direction. But darkness can also be a place of uncertainty and thus of freedom and possibility, a place of equality and the dark shadow a promise. Or to quote Virginia Woolf: The future is dark, which is probably the best thing the future can be."
Andrea Grambow & Joscha Kirchknopf, Directors
