Devil-Clang (2009)

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In traditional communities throughout the world, often at the onset of spring, humans have felt the need to ensure a prosperous future. Bad fortune takes the form of many an allegorical figure: dragons, demons, spirits, which need to be warded off. A favored method involves striking pots and pans, a cacophonous ritual intended to scare the evil away.

I sought to recapture this ritual as it applies to an urban man whose placid lifestyle playing duets with his best friend - a laptop computer, is interrupted by an unsettling work call that nearly drives him to murder. Having stepped back from the edge of disaster in the nick of time, his attempts to return to his dreamy world are met with dire retaliation. Angered, rather than intimidated, our protagonist resorts to the ancestral and universal ritual, energetically driving away the menacing specter using the clangorous sounds of cooking utensils.

Running Time: 10 minutes 34 seconds.