Black Boxes Reflect The Brightest
Graduation Short Film, 2019
Director & Director of Photography: Thomas de Boer
Production Assistant: Giel van Zon
Many contemporary global and domestic conflicts are driven by group-based differences. Our digital culture tends to function as an environment that promotes polarizing views and stimulates the process of othering. The way in which information circulates through images in our contemporary world gives images a lot of responsibility within that process.
BLACK BOXES REFLECT THE BRIGHTEST aims to expose the constructed nature of the narratives that propagate the image of the Other, thereby questioning what the images represent. It explores the power of distance and representation in the online world.
It attempts this by using cinematic means to emulate the mechanisms by which these images circulate and are presented on digital media. Both fictional and found-footage images are included. Qualities such as the repetition of images, use of spectacle, and textual influence are echoed to embody the same language to question itself and what message it propagates.
© 2019