A CABIN, CICADAS, AND CANCEL CULTURE

A humid horror story inspired by the iconic feud between Azealia Banks and Elon Musk: On the heels of a public fall from grace a singer prepares for a comeback at the retreat of an enigmatic Silicon Valley billionaire, but at sunset, the idyll cabin becomes a hellish trap.

My senior overview, and my longest film to date, Wild is the Wind is the culmination of five years of on-and-off film school. While abroad in the spring of 2023, I began work in earnest on the script, a combination of a Nina Simone song and a short story I’d written a few year earlier. Adapted from the legendary smack-down Instagram stories Azealia Banks blessed us with while trapped in Elon Musk’s house awaiting for a Grimes who never showed…

The film was conceived following a disastrous portfolio review in which I was complimented for my projects and art, but told that it wasn’t commercial enough to make me hirable. That my business card didn’t have my heart in it. Always one to rebel in the face of doubt, I decided to take the central experiences of my school career and make something decidedly anti-commercial. Something between abstract and concrete, between a short and a feature, between horror and a thriller. Something that felt like me: performative, socially conscious, and button-pushing. In the face of algorithm driven vertical clips, I wanted something people would have to watch a few times to get. I wanted the audience confused and lost at this cabin the way we are removed from context everyday in the digital realm. So I hope you like it, or hate it, feel frustrated, confused, rewatch it, and find something new every time. I can relate to Asteria’s frustration at the corporate interests dictating her artistic growth, and hopefully in some small way have pushed against those restricting me.