DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

The mind is a movie screen.

Every film starts off in it’s maker as a daydream, a memory or
a wish. These thoughts and images are movies in the mind, spoken in a language that is partially garbled in the personal symbols and codes of the dreamer. Walter Murch, the great editor and sound designer, describes each film as a language that exists for those two hours. That language forms a dialogue between the production team (including the sound designer, the composer, the d.p., the actors as well as the writer and the director) and the audience.

What I wanted to do with “2wks, 1yr” was take what I loved about film and the filmmaking process and marry that with what I love about daydreams and memories. In particular, I wanted to show the way in which emotions and feelings can be influenced, both positively and negatively, by a human being’s hopes, desires, and fears.

What better place to do that than in a relationship in trouble,
especially a relationship where love isn’t neat, tidy or even
absolute: First love, or the first really hard “like” between
two people. This film is my attempt to fashion a narrative based on the juxtapostion of what people say and do with what they think and remember. Using the codes and symbols that are meaningful to each character, the result
is, I hope, that the viewer feels what the characters feel, and understands on a deeper level, because the viewer is struggling with the same thoughts and feelings as the characters: trying to figure out what the images mean
in this language as it unfolds on the screen (for the viewer) and the mind (for the character).

We may be unsympathetic to the character’s behavior preciselybecause we know that in love, especially this kind of love, we can be casually, unconsciously cruel. It is in these moments that I feel so fortunate to have found Michael Gilio and Krissy Shields. They were unafraid to assume these characters, faults and all. Their peformances work so well because they don’t judge these characters. They embrace the greys in Kevin and Julie.

The millineal holiday is the ultimate seasonal dread, anxieties around Christmas, New Year's, are compounded by the spectre of Y2K. The past (comprised of mistakes and assumptions) threatens to doom the future.

However, you can change it, even if only for yourself.

Chris McKay - Director - “2wks, 1yr”