ISOLATION: The tale of transmitted depression.
Below is a film I wrote, directed, and cut back at film school in 2007. This film, first of two, begins the journey of my acceptance as a member of the suicide community. ISOLATION was a bit of a surprise to me. For the most part, I have a plethora of stories constantly swirling through my mind. Every tale is an abstract or compilation of some of my personal archetypes or motifs based on my own experiences.
The curious predicament of what would later become ISOLATION, is in the simple fact that it wasn’t one of the stories I could find at the epicenter of my creativity. The obviousness of this truth has become a primary element of what I consider one of my many character flaws. Bury the past and allow the dead to lie. Seems simple enough? Not so. It seems people, for whatever reason, have bought into the idea that pain is an undesirable negativity and should be extinguished promptly.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Call me a masochist, but I feel pain, or better put, the acceptance of one’s pain, emotional or physical, to be a sort of universal purification rite. I would argue that our great leaps forward in personal or communal development has always come through the trials and tribulations experienced while on the journey of life. To run from the pain is to rob one’s self of extraordinary lessons and opportunities to evolve. If you feel rehashing the demons that have inspired the great soul scars of your heart to be a difficulty, it most likely an experience you haven’t faced yet. To ignore the truth is not only a path way to great personal risk to yourself, but also to those close to you.
Thus the story of ISOLATION is my personal interpretation of the demon my brother Marc Brown ignored, instigating the great catalyst of events that transpired to his death by committing suicide. Like all suicides, the ramifications did not end with Marc. Sadly, the pain endured. Whether the depression that may foment the act of suicide be mental illness or a culmination of social pressure, the act itself seems to be an emotional degrading cancer that has an extraordinarily tenacious contagious characteristic that can spread like wild fire.
ISOLATION is my personal examination into the last moments of my brother’s life and the emotional tsunami that swept through my family’s world.
