Cinema is a mechanism. An enabling mechanism. What and how it enables are constantly changing. For Jacqueline Castel, a recent graduate of the Tisch Undergraduate Film & Television program, cinema seems to be a medium within which space is explored, be it through the domination of space, or the space's domination of us.

Ms. Castel made a startlingly original film two years ago titled "The Birthday Party," and it was through this film that she was brought to my attention. The film is a little claustrophobic masterpiece of tone and art direction, and it came as little shock to learn that Ms. Castel, in addition to directing, also took on art directing and photographing duties.

The narrative, put as simply as possible, is that of a young girl's birthday party, where her somewhat strange relatives (many of whom have prosthetic limbs) are adorning her with gifts. The relatives progress from being somewhat strange to incredibly so, and...well, watch the film. One of the striking things about the film is the way Castel uses a space to evoke tone; in this aspect of the film, she is working on a level far beyond what would, could or should be expected of a film student. The wallpaper, blood red with an intense graphic design, seems to almost lurch out of the walls, pushing in on the characters and, naturally, the viewer as well. The effect of the art direction is one of supreme claustrophobia, which is compounded with the various shots in the film that represent the point of view of the young female protagonist, Claudia. The photography, in a fairly straightforward manner, puts the viewer in Claudia's shoes (or eyes, to be exact) in a manner that becomes nothing less than horrific by the end of the film.

We're horrified, and yet we love it, as is the case with any good horror film. But I don't think that "The Birthday Party" is a horror film, per se; no more than, perhaps, "The Shining" would be called a horror film. Perhaps, then, we can say that it is not MERELY a horror film; it is a progressive movement from within the genre to take it someplace new. One thing that separates Castel's direction from how a typical horror director might have done the same script is the quality of subtlety - there is a very subtle touch in the film. It is restrained where someone who has clearly been an influence on Castel, David Lynch, would be relentless. Or any other director who might fill those shoes. In place of the overbearing dominance that some horror/suspense films are after, we find in "The Birthday Party" a restrained black humor, along with a suspense that creeps along at a deliciously slow pace. Indeed, the film seems like it would belong in the pantheon of Asian suspense cinema before it would be made by an American; and it's certainly too subjective to have any direct influence from Hitchcock.

No, it appears as if Ms. Castel has begun to carve out her very own niche in the wide realm we refer to as "cinema," and at a tender age no less. I recently took a look at some of the footage from her next short film, "The Insect God," adapted from an Edward Gorey short story, and it appears as if what we could refer to as a "style" is beginning to fall into place. The same busy wallpapers, the same dominant atmospheres that are created and controlled via spaces, the same photography that thrusts you into the center of the scene. I sat down with Ms. Castel to talk about her films, and her experiences at NYU.

Jan. 8, 2007.

Dear _______,

Awoke to find
much to my chagrin
a large black cloud
hanging overhead.

No, I'm not kidding this time.

Mayor Bloomberg says
it's harmless.
"We aren't sure of the
exact nature
of the gas, but
we know -"
(they KNOW!)
"that it's not harmful."

Not harmful.
Does that make it harmless?
Or does it sit in some undecided realm
baking my anxiety
until we fix it down
one way or another
until eventually
it pops off again?

On cnn.com, another headline:
"FREEZER FULL OF OWLS MAY REVEAL SECRET OF DEATH."

For a moment, I am excited.

Then I realize,
it's not that, silly.
Just the secret
of the deaths
of a copious amount of birds
in Texas. They just
started dropping out of the
sky like frogs or
snowflakes.

As for us,
our own end
remains uncertain
and mysterious.
If birth is where we are separated,
as Bataille wrote,
perhaps in death we find
unity
once more.

Sifting through the photos
of our last vacation
as I can't help but be affronted by
(in my own head)
Abu Ghraib
Guantanamo
(and who knows how many others)

Bush on the screen
demanding more troops
more funding
and the Democrats
unwilling to say no
one party
under the dollar
when money is on the line
we all take a bow.

Looking at the cloud
outside my window
enveloping the Village and
rushing ever-closer -

wondering if
you'll make it home tonight.
And if not, where
and with whom
you'll sleep
while I wait up for you
until
five?
Six?
How much credit can you really demand,
at this point?

Are you on the subway
with a bomber nearby?
Or out on Bleecker street,
breathing poisonous gas?

Or are you just
sitting in the cafe
maybe shopping
looking at a billboard, even
while the march plays
in the background.

4:30 in the morning
I was looking at an empty bed
an empty kitchen
thinking,
"where is Homeland Security
when I need it?
Where is George W. Bush
where are the men and women of the Armed Forces
when I need to be protected
from a real threat?
Is she cheating on me
with Osama bin Laden?
Perhaps, then, I can pull some weight."

But perhaps you're not even cheating at all.
When you have enough things to worry about
eventually the rest becomes assumed
the anxiety is eased
when you just bow down to it
like a row of dominoes
one falling after another
or a country
falling down
welcoming their saviors, their liberators.

I'm on the subway and
thinking of you as we pass
28th street.
It's an express.
Is she in Bryant Park?
Or has it been closed
since that suitcase there tested positive
for C4?
Or was it even C4?
Wasn't it just a bag filled with sprinkler parts?

Sitting in Balthazar
at 1 PM today
I ate a Croque Monsieur
as I read about
children in Texas classrooms
huddling to stay away from the
ethylenediamine
it could burn their skin and
irritate their lungs
cause serious and perhaps permanent
damage to the
liver
and
kidneys.

All this is going on in Sugar Land.
I put some Sweet 'n Low into my coffee.
Sweet, yes.
And oh so low.
Nothing seems Equal here.

The land of sugar, the land of milk and honey
the Song of Songs and the shortage of money
everyone's laughing but nothing seems funny
tomorrow's weather: everything looks sunny.

EXT. HIGHWAY - DAY

A grey day out on a major highway. It seems to be early morning, perhaps the sun hasn't risen, or perhaps it is midday but it is hidden behind some clouds. The highway is not crowded at all. We see a car - an old, beat up Jeep, maybe '93 or '94 - driving along the road. As it nears us, we realize that there is no driver. However, the car continues to move along the highway, around curves, with no problem at all. But there is very clearly no driver at the wheel, nor is there anyone else in the car. As this occurs, we hear:

JOSH (VO)
Do you ever get that feeling where, you see something off in the distance, and it looks like a person, but then as you start to approach it, you realize that it's not a person at all? I mean, from afar, there's no doubt, your mind is seeing all these objects at once and the mind has to make sense of them somehow, so it turns them into a person, the shape of a person.

EXT. SUBURBAN STREETS - DAY

The same Jeep sits at a red light.

JOSH (VO)
But eventually, your mind can't have things the way it wants it anymore, you get close enough to this "person," and you realize its not a person at all, even though that's what your mind would have had you believe. It's a bunch of random objects assembled in such a manner, in such correlating planes, as to be able to be mistaken for a person. It's not even your mind's fault. It was just doing what it's supposed to do, which is - make sense of the objects in the world around us.

EXT. SUBURBAN STREET - NIGHT

A local mom-and-pop drugstore, nothing fancy. It is night and the store is clearly closed, but the sign on the door reads "OPEN."

JOSH (VO)
To not understand it, the world we live in - that's a dangerous thing. For us.

INT. JEEP - DAY

Inside the Jeep from earlier, only now we see a young man in the passenger seat - Josh, mid to late 20s, maybe 27. He speaks to SAMANTHA, sitting in the driver's seat, but we never see her, we only hear her. The car drives around New York City.

JOSH
I had a dream about us.

Long pause. Lots of honks, blaring noises, etc. We realize that the car is trying to go through Times Square, but there is much traffic.

JOSH
Why do you think they make these cars so big? They don't need to be this big. There's so much space.

EXT. TIMES SQUARE - DAY

An out of focus shot of Times Square. The neon lights glow and take over the frame. The frame slowly racks into focus, and then back out again.

SAMANTHA (OS)
What happened in the dream?

EXT. BEACH - DAY

A completely empty beach, beauty day, great sand, blue water, etc.

JOSH (VO)
I dreamt that we were in a port town in South Africa, on the beach. We were in a little restaurant, simple, just a straw roof, something beautiful like that. It was a great day. We were together again.

Some MUSIC - maybe Joan of Arc - swells in.

JOSH (VO)
Some German tourists were sitting nearby us, and we spoke with them. It was the first time they'd ever been south of the equator. We laughed and told them it was the first time we'd been east of the Atlantic.

CUT TO:

ECU - GRAINS OF SAND

JOSH (VO)
Then the waitress brought us our drinks. We had yellow root tea. You told me I was drinking it too fast, I needed to slow down. I said okay.

INT. JOSH'S APARTMENT - DAY

Josh sits in the corner of his dingy, small apartment. Cracked wallpaper behind him. He sits on the floor. He is speaking into a large portable phone.

JOSH
But then I realized, that I've never been to South Africa. I have no idea what a port town might look like. And I don't know how to speak German. And yellow root tea doesn't exist.

INSERTS - CINDY SHERMAN PHOTOGRAPHS

Inserts of various late period Cindy Sherman photos - photos of prosthetics, appendages, dolls made up to look like her - but no photos of actual people.

JOSH (VO)
Everything just...vanished. Just like that.

EXT. HIGHWAY - DAY

The Jeep drives by itself again.

JOSH (VO)
Just like that.

I am sorry. There is nothing I can write tonight. I have nothing more to give. I've already given it all away. People seem to enjoy taking it. Occasionally they seem grateful. But they never get around to returning it.

Short Story Continued - new piece

---

A dream. It's nice to feel loved. We were in a little bar in Johannesburg, on the beach. The water was blinding. The sun shined down on it so firmly and directly that you couldn't look at it directly; only from an odd angle. You made a comment about this, the relation of the water, and how you looked at it, to the way you looked at me, and I think I laughed. I seemed happy. Your mouth moved in mine.

We turned for a little bit and spoke to some German tourists sitting next to us. They didn't know any English so we spoke German with them. They were from Hamburg. They'd never been south of the equator before, and now they were in South Africa. We told them a little bit about Brooklyn, and that they were no more out of their element than we were. But we didn't seem out of our element. You rested your head on my shoulder and seemed very comfortable.

Then the drinks came. We both had yellow root tea. You told me to slow down, that to drink it too quickly, and when it is too hot, stops its ability to work. Going through things too quickly, I responded, always does. After that we just sat there for a long time, looking at the water with a soundtrack of waves and German and the warping of the wooden ceiling fans as they circled ever so gently above us. I was the world, and the world was me.

And then I realized; that yellow root tea doesn't exist. That I don't speak German. Neither do you. And we've never been to South Africa. Not to mention - Johannesburg is inland. There are no beaches there. Maybe if there were, you would still love me. But there aren't, and you don't. It was these thoughts that greeted me as I woke up.

INT. BATHROOM - PENTHOUSE APARTMENT - MANHATTAN - DAY

A gorgeous marble bathroom. High ceilings, massive shower, et cetera. The room is empty, still, quiet. There are products there - shampoo, conditioner, soap - but they are displayed in such a way that they seem unused. The place does not quite feel lived in.

Most notably, behind the shower is an enormous glass wall. There are no blinds or curtains of any sort. The view provides us with a beautiful view of Manhattan - notably, other buildings nearby that we can see into.

Two people burst into the room - MAN and WOMAN. They are both naked, and making out passionately as he moves her towards the shower. She turns to look at the shower area. She breaks off the kiss.

WOMAN
Are you crazy?

The Man keeps kissing her. She breaks it off again.

WOMAN
I'm not fucking you in that shower, _______.* Half of Manhattan can see us.

(* In these moments, the character speaks the name of the other character, and while we see their lips moving, the word is beeped out.)

MAN
Baby, relax.

The Man gets into the shower. He looks out through the glass windows.

MAN
It's double-sided glass. We can see out, but they can't see in.

The Woman looks out through the glass. She still hasn't stepped into the shower. A beat.

WOMAN
Really?

MAN
C'mere.

He grabs her and pulls her into the shower, thrusting her back up against the glass. They begin to have sex as he looks out towards the city.

CUT TO:

INT. NEARBY APARTMENT - CONTINOUS

A nice apartment, but not opulent the way the last one was. In a living room, a movie crew is gathered. Our camera faces them, and their camera, which is filming something behind our camera. In other words, they are filming something, but we don't know what.

EXT. PENTHOUSE APARTMENT - CONTINOUS

A voyeuristic view of the couple, fucking in the shower. This is clearly what the movie crew is filming.

Losing My Hair

She's behind me on a bicycle, there with the ____ in her hair. It's like hair sometimes, the way patches of memory fall out. The wind in her hair. The wind in her hair. Memories of images, but more common than that, memories of memories, memories of the language used to explain memories. She's there, there with the wind in her ____. There with the wind in her hair she rides on, my blonde blonde pony just before dawn. Clumps may fall out here and there, but others, they, they, they are here to stay, regardless of in what context we may find them, every new context tries to bind them to a rigid meaning, a feeling, but they are too difficult to grasp, slippery, fleeting. What was that thing? But now it's gone. Racing like horses just before dawn. And if I dare? If I dare to remember it like she's still there? Dare to change my course upon a stair? Staring into her eyes after she's gone, leaving for home just before dawn. The meaningless glance here or there, the awkward moment in a stare, the enlarged moment in a stare, staring at the stare for hours on end, trying to bend it break it make it bend, analyzing it until no end, is it an anomaly or is it a trend, is there more around the bend, are we in a story without an end, we can't pretend to know where we're going, you and I and all between us, like a river after a storm, overflowing, like a born-again Christian, hope is growing, like a soothsayer, always knowing, like a rhyme-sprayer, overflowing.

There will be time, I tell myself as I put the memories away. Time for a hundred indecisions, time for a million mnemonic derisions, time for a billion fleeting visions, time for zero recognitions, of the past. The past has passed but the passed will last, even the last of the past is the passed past that will last. And it never dies, it's already dead, the unread book that's already read, the memories all reborn in my head, after I go to sleep and before I go to bed. The wind in her hair that day she rode on, riding towards home and it's not even dawn.