Useless Things

Useless Things, a dreamily crafted short film about a South Asian – Canadian emptying his family home and contemplating his disconnect with his parent’s immigrant experience play at the 10th annual ReeWorld Film Festival (April 7th -11th, 2010) Writer / Director / Actor Faisal Lutchmedial plays Shashin, a young man who cannot come to terms with the loss of his parents, and the loss of a heritage he barely identifies with. The script was developed through SODEC’s Cours Ecrit ton Court program, and won the Writers Guild of Canada prize in 2005 at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema Montreal.

Useless Things was completely shot with a low cost HD camera, the Panasonic HVX-200, along with a 35mm lens system created by Canadian company Cinevate. This is not the RED camera system – which is still cost prohibitive to many low budget independent filmmakers, but a system that costs roughly 1/5 of that. Without the bells and whistles of higher cost cameras the filmmaking team was still able to capture a very filmic quality image that works well with the flowing style of the piece.

A trailer for Useless Things is available here: http://www.lutchmedial.ca/uselessthings

A making of trailer about the Cinevate system is available here: http://www.cinevate.com/images/makingofuselessthings.mov

The director’s previous film, the feature documentary My Cultural Divide, was also about investigations into his place as a Canadian and his mother’s cultural heritage, in addition to being a “well-thought-out doc about the problems of globalization and cheap labour, one that’s aware of the lack of any easy answers.” – Mark Slutsky, The Montreal Mirror. For a limited time My Cultural Divide is available to be seen in its entirety on the web at www.myculturaldivide.ca. As it has a Creative Commons license, viewers are encouraged to download the movie and share with anyone.