Short Film Nominee November 24, 2020
By Jordan Ferraro with 6.6
educational · Short Films · english
The short film endeavours a social commentary on the contemporary state of affairs in the US, soon branching out to how the same issues plague the whole world, and all of us collectively as a society. It spares no one in its sharp approach adopted to engage with the concerns. All of these views are presented forth while being veiled as a documentary that exists within a fictive space, one which has no qualms about revealing its intentions. It declares politicians and people in positions of power vampires who have recently come forward and revealed their true identity.
The blood-sucking demons of fantasy and folklore, thus, now become metaphors for those who are sucking the life force of society, financially and otherwise, leaving their victims lifeless or struggling to survive. The conversation ropes in several names to support the critique - from Oscar Wilde to Noam Chomsky to Rutger Bregman, to name a few. In the process, the viewer is left with an exhaustive engagement with capitalism, economic development and its ramifications on different sections of society, debt, profit - the nature, the burden and the curse of it all.
Though initially it might appear that despite the declaration of several exploitative forces and individuals to be vampires, the film maintains a tone of satirical objectivity, it soon makes it clear which side of the conversation it has located itself on. Citing the French historical drama La Commune (Paris, 1871) as one of its inspirations, Vampires, They Exist?! remains simple in its approach throughout, coming across as a sincere effort, albeit in need of a little more fine-tuning on the level of narrative construction, to tell its own individual story.
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