“Given Again” by Jake Oleson
A painter’s obsession with a pattern in nature disrupts her sense of what is real. The more she fixates on this pattern, the more reality falls apart. Can she face the truth of what lies beneath the surface?
A painter's life is upended after becoming captivated by the roots of a tree. As her fixation on the pattern of the unearthed root system grows, her perception of reality begins to deteriorate, until she too, realizes she is ephemeral. When she’s finally able to let go of her perspective, her world collapses into a singular temporal point – revealing reality in its simplest form; pure energy.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
“In 2019, I discovered that my father Jeff, who had passed away when I was nine, was not my biological father. My world completely shattered, I felt like a stranger in my own body, and my entire understanding of reality was thrown into question. In search of more stable footing, I became interested in theories of reality and consciousness. Curiosity turned into obsession, which ultimately led to a near-complete dismantling of everything that was once familiar to me.
Given Again is my first personal project since finding out about my father. It was completed in just 4 weeks with no script, no crew, using an AI technology called Neural Radiance Fields. This machine learning process creates photorealistic 3D models from a dataset of images, but I discovered the models would fracture when you altered the original dataset. These shattered landscapes felt eerily similar, and helped me begin to navigate this tangled chapter of my life.
The truth is, we know next to nothing. This film is my reminder of the freedom that comes with accepting our limits of knowledge and perception and the importance of letting go.”
-Jake Oleson
Credits
Starring Michelle Nova Luna
Written, Directed & Edited by Jake Oleson
Music by Jake Oleson
Colored by Jared Rosenthal
Mixed by Aneek Thapar
Send Us Your Films
Hey filmmakers! Have a project of your own you’d like us to check out?