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TWO SIDES OF THE
ROTTED WOOD


+ The spirit of a tree demon that has gone mad attempts to exorcise itself from the forest.

The spirit is unnamed, too far lost to pull apart, being saved and being destroyed by themselves and the wood. They are trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth, killing and being killed by their shadow. They are both a part of the wood and a wizard and force of chaos. They are an exorcist and demon and the duality of their own nature is represented through their relationship to ceremonies of death, healing, drowning, and feast.


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There is a split between time,
When blood flows through the cavern as the blade retracts
From the wound comes the river, the river where I carried them.
The rains came and brought me to my knees and from my wound I pull an arrow that I set aflame.


As I watch myself burn I do not feel reborn.


Only grief.


The grief stays in me like the curse my mother left to me.

The grief the healer says moves under the skin of my face, they say my face tightens, contorts, then releases and smiles once again. The say it is inside of me. I picture them like the twin eels which lived in my chest night after night. In a dreamless sleep where my body became saltwater, the water surrounding where home used to be. Where to the North a restless longing lay.


To the South where my old body was buried. Under 3000 smooth stones I must return and grind my bones to dust. The dust is wrapped in smoke and what was ceases to be.


The evil which haunted their body the villagers claimed was I.


In my vengeance I tore myself from the great pine, fleeing to the riverbank my eyes bear witness to the demon. The one who haunts the winds that rustle through the fangs of the broken.


The demon is not divine, though it carries holiness. It drives itself out and thus turns ritual to suicide.



Directed by Rin Kim Ni & Connor M. Barrett
Score by Michelle Luong
Written and designed by Rin Kim Ni
Shot and edited by Conner Barrett