Spectators

A “Highly Inflammable” FILM
WRITTEN BY Salene Schloffel-Armstrong & Electra Sinclair

Jane, Tina and Jack are avid film and television buffs. As teenagers living in the isolated land of New Zealand, in the 21st century, the different forms of media they are constantly consuming has no natural relevance to their everyday lives.
The greater world around them begins to disintegrate politically and economically, and the trio retract further and further into their simulated view of life, patchworked from various elements of their favourite films and television shows, mostly created for a world pre 2000.
As the trio recoil into their constructed bubble, they become branded as outsiders, and blamed by their immediate neighbourhood for a number of minor crimes happening in the community.
The possibility of falling completely out of reality, into a alternative existence consisting only of familiar references becomes far more appealing, as the targeting of the teens spreads and grows in force.

Spectators is a surreal teen film that explores the lack of media relevant to the everyday experience of a New Zealand teenager, and how the over-saturation of the ‘typical’ American teens experience can alter our perception of our own unique reality.