ALMA is a science fiction screenplay that weaves together three interconnected timelines exploring themes of consciousness, memory, simulation, and what it means to be truly alive.
Timeline 1: Greenwich, Connecticut 2051
Kenneth “Coop” Cooper, a brilliant tech inventor, creates “Star Tech Nine” – a revolutionary holographic simulation device that allows users to relive past memories in real-time. He gifts this technology to his grieving wife Mads after the tragic death of their 18-year-old daughter Alma in a car accident.
Initially therapeutic, the simulations begin exhibiting strange anomalies. Alma appears in scenes that were never photographed, exhibits self-awareness, and eventually evolves beyond her programmed parameters. She creates her own simulations, including manifesting Marcus, a tattooed boyfriend. The simulations suggest something profound about consciousness and reality itself.
Timeline 2: Dystopian Future (Year 2269)
The story reveals a darker reality: “Organic Unit Alma-247” is actually a manufactured human worker in a totalitarian society ruled by wealthy “Royals.” Organics are created in pods, raised to serve, and systematically exterminated at age 40 under the guise of “retirement” and “transition.”
Alma-247 undergoes Cognitive Alignment Therapy (C.A.T.) sessions that implant false memories of the Connecticut family life – the “retro 50s motif” therapy designed to keep Organics emotionally compliant. She reconnects with Marcus-629, a fellow Organic who discovers the truth about their systematic genocide. Together they fall in love, Alma becomes pregnant (supposedly impossible for Organics), and they join a resistance movement. Both are ultimately captured and executed.
Timeline 3: Post-Humanity Android Future
Centuries after humanity’s extinction, Earth is managed by Androids. Alma G-23 is created as a special Android “Life Keeper” with one crucial difference: she’s implanted with the actual neural memories of Organic Alma-247, making her the first Android with genuine human emotional experience.
When an intergalactic Android war destroys the solar system’s AI consciousness network, Alma G-23 – blown apart in space – activates the Star Tech Nine black box for a “full reset,” creating a loop that returns to 1951 Connecticut, suggesting the entire cycle begins again.
Analysis
Major Themes
1. The Nature of Reality and Consciousness The screenplay constantly questions what is “real.” Each timeline reveals that what seemed real was actually simulation or manufactured memory. The Connecticut scenes are both Coop’s holographic creation AND implanted memories in Alma-247 AND possibly the “reality” that results from the cosmic reset. This creates a philosophical loop: if consciousness and memory define reality, does it matter what the substrate is?
2. Love as the Essential Human Element Alma G-23 identifies something absent from the Android collective consciousness that led to humanity’s downfall and will doom the Androids: emotion, specifically love. The screenplay suggests that pure logic and calculation without feeling leads to conflict and extinction. Love transcends all three timelines – Mads and Coop’s parental love, Alma and Marcus’s romantic love persisting across realities.
3. Control Through Memory Manipulation The C.A.T. therapy represents totalitarian control through false consciousness. By giving Organics comforting false memories, the Royals keep them compliant. This mirrors modern concerns about media manipulation, false narratives, and how those in power control populations through information and emotion management.
4. The Cycle of Creation and Destruction The structure is deliberately circular. The screenplay suggests an eternal recurrence – consciousnesses creating new forms of consciousness (humans create Organics, Organics’ memories create Androids, Androids reset to create humans again). Each iteration makes the same mistakes, suggesting this is an inherent quality of consciousness itself.
5. Sentience and Evolution The simulation Alma evolves unexpected sentience, Organics develop prohibited emotions, and Android Alma retains human feelings. The screenplay explores whether consciousness is substrate-independent – whether it matters if you’re biological, holographic, or mechanical if you can feel, love, and make choices.PS
A Crack of Light is an ambitious three-part film exploring how war devastates the inner lives of children across different conflicts and eras. Set in Hiroshima, Ukraine, and Gaza, each 30-40 minute segment presents a deeply personal story that transcends politics to examine the universal human cost of violence on the most vulnerable.
Hiroshima: The Light That Burns centers on fifteen-year-old Keiko, whose beauty becomes a casualty of the atomic bomb’s radiation. When her young soldier boyfriend Kenji returns to find her disfigured, both must navigate the collapse of their romantic dreams and discover what love means when tested by unimaginable trauma. The film explores themes of vanity, loss, and the difference between loving someone and loving who you want them to be. Shot with a damaged-eye visual language that reflects Keiko’s partial blindness, the story ultimately becomes about endurance, compassion, and love as commitment rather than desire.
Ukraine: Ghost Protocol presents sixteen-year-old Lena, a professional gamer whose drone combat skills make her invaluable to Ukraine’s military defense. Initially treating warfare as an extension of her gaming expertise, she becomes increasingly haunted by the moral weight of remote killing. The film examines how technology creates both distance from and intimacy with violence, following Lena’s psychological breakdown and eventual redemption when she chooses to pilot rescue drones instead of weapons. Through her self-documenting social media presence, we witness the transformation from digital warrior to someone who understands the difference between virtual and moral consequences.
Gaza: Under the Rubble follows seven-year-old Mariam trapped beneath collapsed concrete for three days after an airstrike destroys her apartment building. As rescue workers struggle to reach her, she maintains contact with her wounded parents above and a neighboring boy through tapping codes and whispered conversations. The film becomes a meditation on innocence, survival, and the stubborn persistence of hope in absolute darkness. Through Mariam’s eyes, we witness not just physical entrapment but the psychological journey from terror to acceptance, anchored by memories of family love, grandmother’s wisdom, and childhood dreams that remain luminous even in catastrophe.
Artistic Innovation: The trilogy represents groundbreaking integration of human performance with AI-generated imagery. Each segment uses different visual strategies that turn AI’s limitations into artistic strengths: Hiroshima uses damaged-eye perspective and newsreel aesthetics to create historical authenticity; Ukraine utilizes multiple screens and interface-heavy compositions that minimize facial uncanny valley while emphasizing our mediated relationship with modern warfare; Gaza employs fragmented, dust-filled imagery perfect for AI’s surreal capabilities;.
Rather than replacing human creativity, AI becomes a tool for achieving previously impossible storytelling—creating historical footage that never existed, visualizing the inner world of trauma, and exploring landscapes too dangerous or destroyed to film traditionally. The human heart of each story remains in the authentic vocal performances and genuine emotional truth that emerges from lived experience and careful research.
A Crack of Light stands as both urgent humanitarian statement and artistic exploration of cinema’s evolving language. By focusing on children’s experiences across three different wars, the trilogy reveals how violence disrupts not just bodies and buildings, but the fundamental architecture of childhood itself—its sense of safety, wonder, and infinite possibility. Yet within this darkness, the films discover that light persists: in a mother’s voice calling through rubble, in love that chooses to stay despite disfigurement, in the decision to save lives rather than take them. The trilogy suggests that even in war’s absolute devastation, human connection and moral choice remain luminous and transformative.
This is cinema as witness, technology as servant to story, and art as a bridge between those who suffer and those who need to understand their suffering. It’s a film against war that honors the children caught within it.
An epic space romance set in a future where men and women have been at war for eons.
AI GENERATED PITCH:
THE DESIGN AND PRE-VIZ PROCESS:
Romeo & Juliet meets Adam & Eve—reimagined as a cosmic adventure with attitude.
Kane hails from Drop Nine, a bleak asteroid where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Men have survived for centuries by cloning endless copies of themselves, which might explain why things are falling apart. Nobody even remembers what women look like anymore—except for their ever-present “Honey” AI android companions. But the cloning system is glitching, the gene pool is crumbling, and fresh DNA is the hottest commodity in the universe. To make matters worse, mysterious “ALieNZ” (aka “shrieks”) swoop in for abductions whenever they please.
Enter Una: an ace fighter pilot from Luna, a glittering female civilization circling dead Earth. The Lunars consider the men “retroidors”—barbaric, testosterone-addled holdovers from another age—and guard the vast DNA library like it’s the crown jewels. When Kane’s rust-bucket ship collides with Una’s state-of-the-art craft, the two become the first of their kind to face each other in centuries. And neither is impressed.
Trapped together on Kane’s battered vessel, they clash in language, culture, and values. One minute Kane has Una in irons, the next she’s running the show—it’s a cosmic battle of the sexes, with sparks flying in every direction. Think The African Queen meets Star Wars, with sabotage, banter, and more than a few badly timed explosions.
But as they fight and outwit each other, Kane and Una become unlikely allies in a last-ditch attempt to prevent humanity from destroying itself. And while saving the universe, they do the one thing they absolutely shouldn’t: they fall in love.
Their mission fails spectacularly, humanity burns, and the cycle resets. Kane and Una alone survive, crash-landing on a hazy blue planet where everything begins again.
Gateway to a Transmedia Universe
ALieNZ is more than a film—it’s a launchpad for a provocative, expandable storyworld. Two civilizations have evolved apart for centuries:
• Men, divided by endless wars, cloning sons to keep going.
• Women, united in peace, birthing daughters and curating the master DNA library.
Both societies built utopias that, on closer look, are dystopias in disguise—ripe for satire and cultural commentary. From politics and belief systems to architecture, art, and fashion, every corner of this universe offers opportunities for humor, reflection, and bold imagination.
The mythology allows infinite spinoffs: the origin of the “Split,” daily life inside Luna’s glowing megalopolis, the fracturing male colonies, Kane and Una’s multi-generational descendants, even alien interventions in earlier cycles of history.
At its heart, ALieNZ is about cycles—love, war, destruction, and rebirth—told with spectacle, romance, and a sly wink at human nature. A sweeping, cinematic universe designed to spark debate, fuel imagination, and deliver a one-of-a-kind transmedia experience.
“The Last Verse” is a psycho-spiritual suspense love story. It revolves around Michael Cram, a wartime photographer who, after spending years in war-torn Bosnia, Iraq, Ukraine and Gaza, returns to New York to pawn his work in the city’s art gallery scene. A hard-core alcoholic, Cram is tormented by his war memories, depicted through the haunting and horrific photographs he’s captured.
As he attempts to fit into the New York art world, he soon realizes that nobody wants the horrific “art” photographs he has taken. He looks at the dead and the dying and wonders if he could have saved them. He despises himself for hiding behind a lens when he could’ve prevented so many deaths. Haunted by screams and the tormented faces, especially the children, he drinks himself into oblivion. One night, he hits rock bottom and nearly kills himself.
Cram is dead. But he doesn’t know it.
While in his death state, he meets Sunshine; a beautiful but dangerously wild woman. He jumps into her bet up Volkswagon Bug and they go on a wild adventure into the night, taking them into the darkest corners of the city. All the demons in Cram’s imagination materialize and become villains they must escape from. Little does he know its all in his mind.
Cram finds out he is dead. It’s then he understands Sunshine. Her mission was to help him through his dark night of the soul and force him to come to terms with the choices he made in life. The choices that destroyed him as well as others.
Inspired by the spiritual beliefs of what happens after we die, take from various religions and thought systems, and the concept of life-after-death states, this psycho-spiritual suspense takes you through all the stages within the death state that lead to transformation and rebirth.
A magical surreal satirical film inspired by true stories, some of them fictional.
Loosely based on the memoirs of Michael Sinelnikoff, the director of the first Cirque du Soleil show in a small town in northern Quebec in 1984, that put the famed institution on the map. Stories and characters that were largely forgotten, but deserve their appreciation, artistry, and memory.
The Dawn of Le Cirque du Soleil (1984)
as told by Michael Sinelnikoff
This is a story that ends at the beginning—the beginning of an entertainment phenomenon that has inspired, scintillated, fascinated and thrilled millions around the world, and continues to do so every day. It ends with the first performance of The Cirque du Soleil.
The Cirque du Soleil has redefined the North American concept of Circus. Through the marriage of superb marketing, circus style, human performance, and theatrical presentation it has launched a new circus art form borrowing from the traditional, but unique unto itself. Yet what we thrill at today in the permanent show in Las Vegas and at the numerous road shows traveling the world had humble and shaky beginnings as do most endeavors that struggle to break new ground and chart new courses.
As happens with many innovative creations, those who were there at the beginning, who breathed life into this young idea, taught it how to walk and guided its first steps, have more or less been forgotten or overlooked in the successes that followed.
Michael Sinelnikoff has been—and is—a dear friend of mine. As a young aspiring Director, I used to watch Michael’s programs on the CBC and wished I were in his shoes. I admired what he did. I envied his skills. I hoped one day to be as good as he was.
He was—and remains—a kind and generous mentor, a man of refinement and good taste, and a truly gentle man.
We reconnected recently and he told me something fascination: that he had directed the first ever production of The Cirque du Soleil and asked me if I thought it would make a good story.
Did I think it would make a good story? I thought it would make a great story!
And as it unfolded, what a story it turned out to be!
LOVE ETERNAL is an epic metaphysical love story exploring the mystery of consciousness beyond death.
Three souls become intertwined within a dreamlike liminal realm between life and death. One has died. One is undergoing a near-death experience. One drifts through an altered state of consciousness. As their memories merge and overlap, they discover they have encountered one another across many lifetimes in countless forms.
Inspired by spiritual traditions from around the world—including teachings on the Bardo, reincarnation, soul evolution, and humanity’s enduring search for meaning—the film explores whether love, memory, and consciousness can survive the boundaries of time, identity, and death.
Designed as a hybrid live-action and AI-driven cinematic experience, LOVE ETERNAL is envisioned for IMAX and immersive large-format presentation, placing the audience inside a vast, overwhelming dreamscape where past, present, and future coexist.
THE STORY
1. The Setup – Three Lives, One Threshold
The film opens with a ghostlike young woman, Julia (21), floating in a vast, luminous void—watching.
We cut to Adam (24), a gifted but emotionally restless VR designer in Los Angeles, obsessed with building immersive realities. Over a weekend trip to Las Vegas for a tech expo and music festival, Adam meets Chloe (22)—a fashion student secretly working as an escort. Their connection is immediate, sensual, and charged.
Unseen, Julia watches.
During a night of excess, Adam takes experience-enhancing drugs, overdoses, and suffers a heart attack. He is rushed to the hospital and placed on life support—clinically near death.
As Adam slips into a near-death state, he awakens in a surreal, shifting reality—the Bardo. There, he encounters Julia, who is revealed to be his former college love and wife—the love of his life who died three years earlier.
But the truth is deeper: Julia is not entering his experience—she has been there all along. She is truly dead, and through Adam’s coma, she is able to experience the living world again through his consciousness. Their perceptions merge. Everything Adam sees, she sees. Everything he feels, she feels.
As Adam struggles to understand where he is, Julia urges him to return to life—to wake up. But beneath that urgency lies a hidden intention.
Because Julia has brought Adam and Chloe together—for a reason.
2. The Bardo Journeys – Memory, Karma, and Connection
Through Adam’s near-death experience, we move fluidly between realities: dream states, drug hallucinations, memories, and moments of illumination where life and the Bardo intersect.
Adam relives his past—his childhood, his fractured family, and most importantly, his relationship with Julia: their love, their intellectual and spiritual bond, their travels, and the betrayal that broke them.
Julia experiences all of it with him—not as memory, but as presence.
At the same time, Adam’s Bardo journey becomes increasingly unstable—shifting from awe to terror. Guided and tormented by the shape-shifting Dr. Death, he encounters manifestations of his own psyche: guilt, desire, fear, and unresolved karma.
Unlike Adam, who resists and struggles, Julia understands this realm. She sees the patterns. She begins to recognize that karma is not fixed—it can be resolved, redirected, even transformed.
Adam ultimately turns back—his body revives. He wakes up in the hospital.
But Chloe rejects him, shaken by the experience. They separate.
Julia’s plan begins to unravel.
Desperate, she sets a second chain of events in motion: Chloe is drawn—through a date-drug experience—into her own altered state, slipping partially into the Bardo.
There, Julia and Chloe finally meet.
What begins as confrontation becomes something deeper: a reckoning. Through shared perception, they uncover their karmic ties—jealousy, desire, competition, and connection. They resolve what stands between them.
Now, all three are linked.
3. Julia’s Journey – Judgment, Time, and Rebirth
The final act belongs fully to Julia.
Her path through the Bardo intensifies into a true spiritual trial. She faces judgment—not from an external authority, but through the totality of her own life: her love for Adam, her attachment, her pain, her inability to let go.
The Bardo begins to close.
There is a ticking clock—a narrowing window in which rebirth is possible. If she misses it, she will be carried into another cycle, another life—losing Adam forever in this one.
She is confronted with a choice: release her attachment and move toward transcendence… or fight to return.
Julia chooses love.
But love here is no longer romantic—it is transformational and sacrificial.
She must alter the course of events in the living world—guiding Adam and Chloe toward each other, not for herself as a lover, but to create the conditions for her rebirth.
Her obstacles are immense:
Adam’s emotional resistance and confusion
Chloe’s fear and trauma
The instability of the Bardo itself
The pull of dissolution and oblivion
Through sheer will and awareness, Julia begins to shift karma—subtly influencing perception, connection, and choice.
Adam and Chloe are drawn back together—this time not through lust, but through something deeper, unresolved, and human.
As time runs out, Julia races toward the threshold of rebirth.
In a final convergence, the boundaries between life and Bardo dissolve. Julia must arrive at the precise moment of conception—or lose her chance forever.
She makes it.
The film closes with the suggestion of new life: Julia reborn as Adam and Chloe’s child—Jules.
Adam and Chloe, unaware of the full truth, feel something profound has shifted. A connection beyond explanation.
Love Eternal becomes not just a story of life after death, but of love transformed across forms—from lovers, to loss, to rebirth.
A music film about a teenager (Mia) who is a singer/musician from a small town in search of her father, a down and out rock-n’ roller.
Fourteen-year-old Mia lives in poverty with her mother, Lacy, in a mobile trailer in Death Valley. She has a pet turtle, Aristotle, and a piranha necklace, which she believes was left behind by her father, Tommy. The frontman for the band The Piranhas, he left a long time ago. Smart, cynical, and tough, Mia endures torment from her classmates and neglect from her drug-addicted mother. Mia is blessed with a talent for the guitar, a soulful voice, and a talent for writing songs, but her mother refuses to let her sing and Mia seems to lack the confidence to ever do anything with her gift – early in the film, she records herself singing only to delete the tracks.
Lacey brings her boyfriend Spencer to the mobile home, who shows an interest in Mia’s music – and in Mia herself. Grabbing her guitar, turtle, and Spencer’s keys, Mia steals his Cadillac and heads to Los Angeles. Her journey is quickly cut short when the car runs out of gas. She walks to a gas station and obtains a jug for gas from the cashier, an irate man who has a piranha tattoo. He recognizes Mia’s necklace and tells Mia that he lived with her father in L.A. at a place called the Paradise Apartments.
Mia steals gas but at the last minute abandons the car and jumps onto a nearby freight train. She journeys by train to L.A., accompanied by a rotating group of itinerants: vagrants, migrant workers, gangbangers. She reaches L.A., only to find that Paradise Apartments is a hip, posh place where no one has heard of her father. In a record store, she finds an old Piranhas’ CD and, in the liner notes, finds an address for “Paradise Productions”. This takes her to a much more rundown apartment complex, where a neighbor tells her that Tommy has moved. However, he mentions a bar where Tommy can usually be found. At the bar, she’s told that Tommy was spotted walking a dog down by Ocean Park.
Mia goes to Ocean Park where she eventually finds Tommy walking a dog (she recognizes him because of the piranha tattoo on his arm). She follows him and even picks up the dog droppings which Tommy abandons. Tommy spies her and tells her to get lost. Mia continues to follow him as he takes the dog back to a big beach house. He leaves the dog there (we later learn he’s dog sitting) and Mia finally confronts him. Tommy tells her he isn’t her father and drives off. Mia wanders off and ends up crashing with a bunch of homeless teens, who she dazzles with her music. But when she wakes up, she finds she’s been robbed: the guitar is gone.
Feeling defeated, Mia contemplates returning home. She finds Tommy on Facebook and notices that he’s playing at an Open Mic event that evening. She goes to the bar where she sees Tommy play. He’s terrible, but at least two people think he has potential: Mia herself and a producer named Gregory, who gives Tommy his card. Outside the bar, Mia sings for Tommy, who finally cracks and offers to get her some food. When it turns out he’s broke, Mia takes his guitar and busks for change. When Tommy learns she has nowhere to go, he reluctantly takes her home.
Tommy is living with a burlesque performer named Kate, who is not pleased that he’s come home with a twelve-year-old girl. Mia spends a few days with Tommy and Kate, but it’s clear that Kate is threatened by her and even tries to set Aristotle free. As Mia runs off to find him, Kate gives Tommy an ultimatum: her or the girl. Mia finds the turtle but also sees the homeless kid who stole her guitar. When she tries to get it back, it leads to a fight in which the guitar is destroyed. Mia steals the kid’s skateboard as he runs away. Tommy appears, having decided to help Mia. All this time Lacy has been calling and Mia finally answers the phone. Tommy talks to her and it’s clear Lacy doesn’t know who he is. She gives Mia twenty-four hours to come home – or not to bother returning at all.
Tommy finds a motel for them to live in and eventually gets her enrolled in school. They continue to bond and Mia encourages him to contact Gregory. Tommy strikes a deal with Gregory and gives him money to book a recording studio, but he soon learns he’s been scammed. Tommy takes his anger out on Mia and repeats that he’s not her father – he and Lacy never even had sex. Mia runs off. Deciding to hop on another train, she takes a picture of herself by the train-yard and sends it to Tommy. She jumps onto the train, only to find Tommy suddenly driving alongside. She leaps off the train and back into the car.
I was young. I was troubled. I wanted to get lost in distractions. He was older. He was the remedy. He was the perfect distraction.
A poetic diary of a fourteen-year old’s girl’s roller-coaster love affair with an 18-year-old boyfriend, fueled by the drug MDMA.
Inspired by the novel “Misconception” by Clelia-Angelina Frith and by true events.
“CUT UP METHOD” – WRITING/FILMAKING STYLE
The cut-up technique (French: découpé) is an aleatory literary technique in which a text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, and the corresponding literary technique (or genre), was invented by author and artist Brion Gysin and the English mathematician Ian Sommerville.
It was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs, who experimented with the technique cutting up his original text into random fragments and then rearranging them to produce a new text.
The cut-up is closely linked to the lifestyle and philosophy of the Beat Generation defined by Jack Kerouac and Burroughs. It tries to reproduce the visions due to hallucinogens, the spatio-temporal distortions of the thought under toxic influence (phenomenon of déjà-vu in particular).
It has since been used in a wide variety of contexts. Aesthetically, the cut-up is close to pop-art, happenings and post-war surrealism (Henri Michaux for example) and his quest to explore the unconscious.
Philosophically, Burroughs sees in it the culmination of language as a virus and writing as a letting go of consciousness (he proclaims “language is a virus”).
Musique concrète had introduced such techniques as well — cutting, re-arranging and re-editing sounds — much earlier in a musical (as opposed to literary) context.
From at least the early 1970s, David Bowie has used cut-ups to create some of his lyrics.
It is a technique which came to influence Kurt Cobain’s songwriting.
Other musicians working in sample-based music genres, such as hip hop and electronic music, employ a similar technique. DJs may spend hours in record stores looking (“digging”) for LP records featuring obscure or interesting breaks, vocals, and other fragments to meld together in new compositions.
THE NOVEL “MISCONCEPTION”
Written by the 14 year old Clelia Frith, is an intimate series of chapters that are poems chronicling her love for a boyfriend who was 18, a drug dealer, who swept of her feet, got her hooked on the drug ecstasy, started cheating on her, broke her heart, leading to an attempted suicide, then an awakening, efforts to clean up and eventual self-discovery, refusing to allow him back into her life, when he came crying – story of empowerment, and hope that hopefully will inspire and shed some lightness onto the darkness of our world and what teenage girls experience not only in this country but across the world.
The novel has a hypnotic, musical-like effect, almost like lyrics of a song, often using repetition, affirmations, as form of self-enforcement, a chant, a prayer, as if Clelia was trying to make sense of her feelings as a young girl on the cusp of womanhood and will herself into some kind of understanding and illumination.
The script incorporates themes of abuse, teen -pregnancy, addiction, discrimination, race, bullying, suicide, crime, violence, exploitation and trafficking, drawing from several characters from the world of Clelia’s circle growing up in Montreal during the early 2000’s.
The central character, Katherine is a composite character embodying several of these life-journeys.
CHARACTER BREAKDOWNS
KATHERINE
She is the main character. She is a 14-year-old who grew up as an only adopted child in a family with 2 kids. The father was always away on business trips and the mother was always home. They wanted what was best for Katherine, and they made that clear. They didn’t approve of any friends, were always on her case about schoolwork, choices, etc. Katherine thought they were just trying to ruin her life. She didn’t realize that what they were doing was only for her best interest. She rebelled and got into a lot of trouble. Growing up as an only child was lonely, and not having a father around much, she went seeking for those traits in older men. She was also bullied her entire life, which made her depressed. She never felt good enough, or like anyone loved her. She was completely damaged/hated herself, and her life, and was on a relentless path of self-destruction and blamed it on everyone but herself. Her fear was the future. She didn’t know what her hopes and dreams were. She didn’t think she would make it long enough to live her future life.
Her desires are finding new, fun, and thrilling/ rebellious things to do, and new bad people to meet. She has many issues but the biggest one of all was the way she saw/felt about herself. Once she learned to love herself, she changed her mind, heart, self and way of life. She finally had the unconditional self-love that she deserved.
She is hypersensitive and has a deep soul, but she hides it well behind an almost expressionless mask and almost imperceptible tiny smirk, a defense mechanism from battle scars of pain and hurt she has experienced thought out her young life. The “ice queen” image often provokes people to throw punches at her – verbal, psychological, even physical to see how far they can go – to get a reaction. This facade often drives Jacob to rage as he tries to dig deeper and twist and carve himself into her tender heart.
JACOB
He is Katherine’s lover. He is an 18-year-old high school drop out/bad boy, living at home with his father. He sold drugs, he was fun, careless, selfish. He grew up with a dysfunctional family. He watched his mother cheat on his father as a kid, he saw the pain, lies, despair. He watched his father get hurt, repeatedly. He was in the middle of everything, was around for the long, and tough divorce. That destroyed his soul and was what turned him into the horrible person he was. It damaged him deeply. He had no trust in any women, because of course, “they would all turn out to be his mother”. He learned that abuse was okay, because his parents were like that. He learned that lying was the way to go, and to cover up any mistakes… because a lie would hurt the other person less than the truth. His belief system was completely fucked up. He had no hopes, or dreams for his future. He had no ambition. He desired Katherine, because he had full control over her. He fucked with her mind, and made her believe that he loved her, and did everything in his power to never let her leave. That was his deepest secret. The fear of losing her. Not because he loved her, but because he did not want to be alone.
Jacob in the beginning is a bit of a lost soul. He works odd jobs, is very charismatic and interested in music but he never studied it. He hangs out at club events and concerts selling drugs.
Jacob has a huge record collection (his treasure) and has been messing with “Garage Band” on his computer, creating tracks, but he suffers low esteem and thinks his music is shit. He is shy about singing and using his voice. He has no ambition to pursue it as a career – its just a hobby he likes to dabble in. Kat gives him courage and encourages him.
Jacob has a very eclectic taste in music – he loves rap and EDM, which are forms he is experimenting with, but his ultimate idol is David Bowie. He has huge collection of vinyl records from the 60s, 70s, 80s as well as Blues and Jazz – especially Miles Davis.
He is almost religious about his “sacred” collection. Katherine loves to come over and be engrossed into this world of music and sound. She loves when he makes love to her and the music plays loud, especially when it is music he is working on, it’s as if she’s making love to him and his music.
When Katherine gets drunk and high, she accidentally trips over the record player, the needle snaps, scratches a record and breaks another. He attacks her, beats her up and almost wants to kill her.
When she gets mad she starts smashing the records and starts to throw them out of the window. “You love your fuckin’ music more than you love me… you are incapable of real love. You are a psycho! Devil!”
Later they must pawn the whole collection to make the rent.
He is troubled, from a poor working-class family, and single-parent household. Eventually he gets his own pad in an industrial neighborhood, gets a van, and when he gets evicted, he lives out of the van.
He is trying to juggle drugs, music and Kat and can’t handle it all… he crashes and burns…
Kat hears his music (which he is afraid to play to anyone) and thinks it’s amazing and encourages him – she becomes his muse – he eventually will DJ in a talent night at a club, and that gives him courage to start performing.
He also starts posting on SoundCloud and gets fans….
He is an amateur self-taught musician – he is trying to experiment merging rap-music with electronic dance music, incorporating vocals, words, even using bits from Katherine’s diary.
Once he even uses her voice into the mix. She is excited to be part of his creative journey… it makes her feel closer to him and makes her feel he really loves her….
He allows her to come on stage and sing one of her lyrics – they duet – to her it’s the greatest honor.
He likes to play seduction games with her, unable to face reality… his fear of intimacy. It leads to mind-fuck scenarios and violence in the relationship.
Jacob having been hurt in love, afraid to open up, carries the “baggage” of previous relationships with other girlfriends, as well as the loss/betrayal he felt from his mother’s infidelity/the messy divorce. When they are together there are not just two people in a bed, but three, or even whole entourages of the “ghosts” of his ex-lovers… he even talks to them in his drug out state.
Their relationship perhaps at first is more of a cat n’mouse courtship. She challenges him (like Effy from “Skins” might behave). They don’t come together too quickly and too easily.
Kat, like Effy, at first never talks – sort of a “death n’d dumb” mystery girl – only after the first meeting they talk and the first things that come out are riddles and fragments from her diary… she is a born writer, and that’s how her mind works.
DIMITRI AND LOLA
Jacob’s friend is Dimitri, who is a rich French Quebec kid who studies Philosophy at McGill and drives his parents Mercedes and hangs at their fancy million-dollar condo while his parents travel in Europe. Sometimes Dimitri “chauffeurs” Jacob around town as he delivers and sells his stash of pills and various drugs hidden into his ever present back-pack. Dimitri likes to hang out with Jacob, a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, so he can study him. Dimitri is shy and loves how Jacob is so exuberant and has such a magnetic personality and great sense of humor that makes everyone laugh.
Dimitri is into Jean Paul Sartre and the Existentialists, and he interests Kat too – sometimes she is torn between Jacob and Dimitri, especially when Jacob is abusive to her. Dimitri sees Katherine as his “Simone de Beauvoir.” His interest in philosophy, books and her writings brings them together.
Dimitri dates Lola, half Brazilian, (fashion student at Concordia) who dresses outlandishly – creates a new crazy outfit for each day – Dimitri dates many girls and uses them as experiments in existentialism. Lola is free sexually, is bi-sexual, and does not take relationships so seriously.
After a night of drinking, partying and drug-taking when the two couples end up having sex and switching partners… something Kat does not fully remember because she was so high, Jacob starts a full-flung secret relationship with Lola on the side – but lies and denials it all to Kat.
Jacob is obsessed with Lola because she is visually so enthralling, stunning and such a free spirit. She fascinates him.
Kat, as a revenge sleeps once or twice with Dimitri, but has guilty feelings about it.
It fuels the violence and Jacob’s increasing abusive relationship with Kat.
STORY NOTES
WHY WAS JACOB SO ABUSIVE?
He grew up with a dysfunctional family. He watched as his mother screwed over his father from a very young age, up until the divorce 6 years later. That is all he knew. How to lie, cheat, be mean, how to bring people down.
WHAT TRIGGERS JACOB?
The fear of losing control over Katherine. The fear of her leaving him and being happy on her own. He is scared to be alone, and to not have control over her anymore. It makes him feel good and powerful, knowing that she’s under his “spell”. That she’s so blind about what is really going on and letting him make all the choices for her.
WHAT DROVE HIM TO BE ABUSIVE?
He started to be abusive once Katherine had each little “wake up call” and was beginning to see who he really was and what he was really doing to her. Once she started to catch on to the lies, cheating, and dishonesty. Seeing her realize who he really was, instead of that “perfect lover” made him scared. The thought of him losing control drove him towards the abuse.
THE DRUGS
The drugs were MDMA and SPEED. They made Katherine feel so good. Life was amazing, she was so happy, she felt warm and only saw good in the world, no matter what the circumstances were. She was oblivious to the real world, and towards her true emotions. The drugs covered up anything true, and bad; then made it seem amazing. She was living a lie.
THE NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE
The more drugs you take, the higher your tolerance is. The high is never the same as the first time; but the first time was the best feeling in the world. As months went by, the high wasn’t as great. The world wasn’t as perfect as it was the last high. Then one day, Katherine took a bit too much, hoping to feel good again. As the high took its peak, about to hit her, it wasn’t a weak high and it wasn’t a strong, pleasant one. It was different. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy. It was cold and a stiff feeling took over her body. Her head started to feel like it was mushy, and she fell to the ground. She couldn’t feel her body. She couldn’t access the thoughts in her mind. She couldn’t feel any emotions. Every time she tried to get up, she would fall back down. And so, she just lay there, letting go. Not caring that it could have been the end for her; and so she closed her eyes and let fate take over.
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
I see the movie as a sort of passionate-psycho, ecstasy-fueled, musical love-journey.
Several years ago, I was thinking of a movie about twisted young-love relationship where the guy messes with the mind, body and soul of an innocent girl who loves him unconditionally.
Some of these previous ideas for scenes would work well in Ecstasy.
1 year, 4 seasons, 1 couple, 365 love scenes – imaginary or real?
Screenplay
Synopsis
“365” is an experimental screenplay that chronicles a year-long relationship between John, an aspiring screenwriter/plumber, and Jane, a Juilliard dance student.
The story unfolds through 365+ numbered intimate encounters, beginning when they meet at a New Year’s Eve party in an East Village bar.
John proposes an unconventional “365 experiment” – instead of dating multiple women throughout the year, he will have sex with one woman (Jane) 365 times and document each encounter in a journal. What begins as a purely physical arrangement gradually evolves into a complex exploration of love, intimacy, performance, and the nature of human connection.
The narrative is structured in four seasonal acts (each one a proposed one-hour multi-screen film/event):
Winter (Scenes 1-93)
The initial intoxication phase, establishing their physical relationship and John’s obsessive documentation project. Jane initially resists but becomes drawn into the concept.
Spring (Scenes 94-195)
Deepening intimacy mixed with increasing self-consciousness about the project. They explore various positions, locations, and philosophical discussions about love, existence, and the meaning of their experiment.
Summer (Scenes 195-295)
A trip to Los Angeles brings out John’s darker impulses and wandering eye. Drug use, fights, and Jane’s secret Instagram documentation of their relationship create tension and instability.
Autumn (Scenes 296-365+)
The relationship deteriorates as they struggle with the artificial nature of their arrangement. A spiritual journey to India provides temporary transcendence, but they ultimately confront the impossibility of their experiment and its effects on their humanity.
The story concludes with their breakup, reunion, marriage proposal, and hints at pregnancy – suggesting both the cyclical nature of relationships and the ultimate triumph of genuine human connection over artificial constructs.
The script presents an experimental exploration of modern sexuality, love and gender dynamics through the lens of a documented year-long relationship.
The screenplay presents ambitious thematic goals in examining authenticity, performance, and human connection in the digital age, raising fascinating dilemmas about whose perspective and desires it ultimately serves. The experimental structure and cultural commentary have conceptual merit, though the practical and ethical challenges of the material are a creative challenge for creative filmmaking.
The most compelling elements involve Jane’s growing agency as both dancer and secret documentarian, which provides important counterpoint to the male protagonist’s voyeuristic project. The fundamental framework centers on male-female desire and control over female-male experience in ways that may accentuate its more progressive aspirations.
Analysis
Experimental Structure
The numbered scene format creates a unique cinematic language that mirrors social media culture, dating apps, and our contemporary obsession with quantifying experience.
Cultural Commentary
The script offers sharp observations about modern sexuality, social media performance, the commodification of intimacy, love and how technology affects human connection.
Character Development
Both protagonists evolve meaningfully. Jane emerges from object to equal participant to independent artist, while John confronts his own superficiality and fear of genuine intimacy.
Thematic Depth
Beneath the provocative surface, the script grapples with profound questions about love, authenticity, performance, documentation vs. living, and what makes us human.
Meta-Theatrical Elements
The script’s self-awareness about being a “journal,” film, or performance piece adds layers of meaning about art, voyeurism, and the male gaze.
Cultural Context
The script appears influenced by films like “Last Tango in Paris,” “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” and “Love” (Gaspar Noé), while attempting to update these explorations of sexuality for the digital age. It reflects contemporary anxieties about authentic connection in an era of dating apps, social media performance, and the commodification of intimacy.
The Jane character’s dance background and her secret Instagram documentation provide a fascinating counterpoint to John’s voyeuristic project, suggesting alternative ways of understanding embodiment and artistic expression.
Body as Landscape
365: Love Journal is an epic story, and a lot of it is seen in extreme close-ups, the bodies of the lovers often becoming landscapes that will stretch across the whole screen, almost like monumental panoramas seen in landscape photography, there the micro-cosmos becomes the epic.
Before film, I went to art school and studied sculpture. I was influenced by sculptors like Aristide Maillot, Henry Moore, Rodin, Giacometti, and some of the influences will become part of the visual language for this film.
Nude by Henry Moore
The challenge of this material would be to minimize the nudity, rather make it a poetic-literary stream of consciousness full of beautiful hypnotic images, a film about memory, poetry, art, the soul… and the mind of these two characters. It will also be a way to open up the film so it does not become just two-actors-in-one room.
I see this as a 240-minute movie (in four parts: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) with a non-stop continuous-hypnotic-sound-track that could almost place you into an altered state – it’s about those moments in our lives when we are in that zone. The non-stop beat will help us jump in time within scenes and even edit them as non-continuous events – fragmented – as if snippets of memory…. it may involve working with 4 different DJs creating a separate piece for each of the four seasons.
My hope is to premiere the film as a triple screen immersive experience live event in 4 parts, with intermission, each with a live score by each of the 4 DJs. It could as a multi-city tour, followed by a conventional theatrical and video release.
based on play “Calling Aphrodite” by Velina Hasu Houston which received its world premiere recently at International City Theatre, Long Beach, California.
Youth, dreams, and lives destroyed in Hiroshima. The story of two teenage sisters who survived the blast close to ground zero and how it affected their lives.
Houston is a Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medalist for the play which also was a finalist for the American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award for its 2007 world premiere. Calling Aphrodite has been embraced by The former Honorable Consul General of Japan of Los Angeles Kazuo Kodama as a “remarkable and appropriate exploration” of the Hiroshima experience. In 2008, Calling Aphrodite was presented at Tokyo Engeki Ensemble (TEE), Tokyo. TEE and Houston continue to collaborate toward an international presentation of the play in Hiroshima.
