Kamikaze (2005)  11 min   Raleigh, NC

Writer/Director: Nick Karner

With: Erin Van Eck

IMDB Synopsis:  A dark figure of pure evil pursues a young woman who just wanted to get high on drugs.

     This was my first experimental film. I’d read that Scorsese described Raging Bull as his “kamikaze” film because he didn’t know if he’d ever make another movie again.  He threw everything he knew into the film and a masterpiece was the result. My film is no masterpiece, but I definitely wanted to try every kind of shot I’d ever wanted to do.  The basic idea was that the woman takes some weird drugs, doesn’t think they’re working, and then begins to be pursued by a dark figure in a rapidly deteriorating world.  This gave me license to do some really funky things with the camera, like spinning, weird angles(including a tricky “above the fan” shot), long tracking shots, bullet POV’s, and a Matrix-like finale.

      The movie went through a lot of changes. It was originally 20 minutes, then it started shrinking, ultimately ending up at 11 minutes. I took out a ton of footage.  It’s ironic considering the current footage barely makes sense, but I doubt the deleted scenes would’ve provided answers.  I had wanted to make the movie deliberately confusing, but I wanted people to watch and like the film, so I opted to use the dark figure chasing the woman as a way to ground the film.  Funny enough, it comes off as an anti-drug film, although that wasn’t my intention. I just didn’t want it to be a dream film.