Valentine’s Day sucks.
That’s why I spend every February the 14th in the fetal position, drowning my single-life sorrows in the comforting and loving arms of the Saw horror franchise.
As a quick warm-up for my marathon, I stopped by the “Anti Valentine’s Day Film Screening” on Feb. 5, presented by SAW Gallery.
The showing was comprised of two 35-minute segments, each consisting of a collection of short films produced by the president of the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of Ottawa (IFCO), Deniz Berkin.
Berkin, who has been making movies on film since he was 16, said that when looking back on his collected works, he found a common theme of love gone wrong — something even he found weird considering he’s been married for 20 years — and he wanted to share it with the Ottawa community.
The exhibition included the quirky comedy called Wedding Day Blues, a three-minute film highlighting the troubles that can arise when your newly-wed wife violently castrates you.
My personal favorite, Dispatches from the Dead, reminded viewers that no matter how desperate you are, turning to a Ouija board to find your Romeo will leave you with the same beautifully tragic fate as Juliet: dead.
When I asked Sofia D’Alessandro, a fourth-year nursing student at the University of Ottawa, why she had attended the film screening, she said, “I like the idea of commiserating over Valentine’s Day with a girlfriend rather than celebrating it with a boyfriend.”
“But there wasn’t enough murder,” fourth-year political science student Madelyn Wilson insisted.
“When I heard ‘love-gone-wrong’, I was thinking ‘psycho-ex-lover-ferociously-stabs-her-husband.’ Not ‘manic-prostitute-falls-in-love-with-alcoholic-Santa.’” This was in response to Berkin’s six-minute drama, 187 Days until Xmas.
The introductory film, a three-minute spoken word starring Berkin, featured creepy shots of the filmmaker in a dark, empty hallway while he repeatedly delivered one of the most successful pickup lines I’ve ever heard: “Why won’t you fall in love with me?”
“I find often that there are certain emotions that are with you throughout your whole life. If you’re married then you approach them differently, but everything [about Love Gone Wrong] is a constant emotion that’s common to anybody and everybody,” Berkin said.
“So I think for me it’s a way of working out issues and feelings that I have rather than doing something crazy like a mid-life crisis.”
Regardless of his motives, Berkin’s films successfully spooked me into remembering that the only warm pair of arms that I need to be wrapped in this week are my own (featuring my Snuggie, of course).
In case you missed the screening, but still want to pre-game for your anti-Valentine’s Day day, you can view all of the short films on Berkin’s Vimeo page: vimeo.com/user664067.
