Myrna the Monster, Ian Samuels’s 2015 brief movie that secured him a spot on our 25 New Faces of Movie record that very same 12 months, is lastly accessible to look at on-line by way of the filmmaker’s private Vimeo account. The titular monster is voiced by Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Damage frontwoman) and embodied by an elaborate puppet that Samuels, a former Sesame Avenue worker and graduate of CalArts’s puppetry program, crafted himself.
Filmmaker editor-in-chief Scott Macaulay penned Samuels’s 25 New Faces profile, describing the plot of the 14-minute brief as follows:
Hovering simply round 3 ft, Myrna — the star of Samuels’s breakthrough brief, Myrna the Monster — is a melancholy, squeaky-voiced (by Kathleen Hanna) creature who simply occurs to share the identical social anxieties as any normal-size humanoid struggling to make a connection within the huge metropolis. Whether or not carting her garments to the Laundromat, chilling on the seaside or participating in a desert fireworks celebration, Myrna offers voice to that a part of us trying to find which means amidst a sea of likes, favorites and Web-enabled hook-ups.
Alongside elaborate puppetry, the movie contains a 2D flashback sequence animated by Ethan Clarke that gives a little bit of illumination on how Myrna—who’s technically an alien versus an Earth-made monster—got here to reach on our planet.
Wanting the Week additionally shared and wrote about Samuels’s movie, which originated as a fee by MTV earlier than premiering at Sundance and screening at SXSW in 2015. Georg Csarmann writes:
To be sincere, who hasn’t felt like Myrna in some unspecified time in the future, not less than to some extent? (And if not: what are you doing on a distinct segment web site about brief movies? Shouldn’t you be out taking part in group sports activities or one thing?) Myrna the Monster is a common story about feeling like an outsider and the way, possibly generally, you even see your self as a monster. It’s a story about loneliness, nevertheless it’s additionally about defying that feeling by placing your self on the market and in search of connections, even when it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Being human could be onerous, particularly in the event you’re an alien.
Watch the brief above, now streaming eight years after it first made waves on the pageant circuit.
