Hi everyone!

I’m Ava Chau, a third semester Motion Pictures student at Hochschule Darmstadt. For the semester project this winter, I have pitched COTTON SHOT!, a short film about desire, fantasy, and power, how the three intertwine, and the lengths to which one can pervert the other.

I have very fortunately been selected as among the eight projects to be produced this December and as it is a story I have been working on-and-off on for two years, it is thus a story very near and very dear to my heart, and moreover then a project I hope to pour everything we can into.

The Project

“Omnibus” is our program’s semester project, an assignment that all students partake in at one point or another in their student career here. It involves the week-long construction of an indoor set by our entire class followed by eight days of filming eight projects back to back to back. Each film gets one single shooting day! The pre-production, or preparation, phase is consequently particularly crucial for an assignment such as this.

That is why I am hoping to provide the funds to facilitate the work of my classmates, my crew, and my cast. Funds will allow our team to do the best job we can without the constant anxiety of a lack of budget looming over us and it will provide our team the means to bring our best to the project, both within ourselves and in the literal work we can bring to the table.

The Story

(see: pitch deck here!)

COTTON SHOT! follows a brief cat-and-mouse game over the telephone between a drug addict and a dominatrix in 1970s Berlin, both of whom are succinctly named for their respective occupations – Junkie and Domme.

On a typical hot summer afternoon, with the sun out and shining, kids playing in the street, and the city sweaty and shiny and alive, in a dingy studio apartment lies Junkie, deep in a drunken, stoned slumber. She only awakens when the blaring sounds of city traffic erupt outside her window, sending her face-first onto the floor, and more importantly: a reminder to phone an old flame, scribbled into the wall from God knows when.

This is how Junkie reaches Domme.

Their ensuing phone call is Junkie’s attempt at a seduction, seeking to jog Domme’s memory of their romantic love-at-first-sight encounter the other week. Juxtaposed beside Junkie's colorful storytelling are flashbacks which Domme begins to have.

Flashbacks that don’t really seem to line up with the story Junkie is telling. Flashbacks that make Domme a little nauseous actually, because she doesn’t quite remember being swept off her feet that night. In fact, what Domme remembers is something a little more violent, a little more distressing, and a little more fearsome...

Alongside desire and power, COTTON SHOT! is also an investigation of fantasy and memory and how murky one can make the other; do we sometimes misremember things unintentionally, are our memories sometimes warped by things we subconsciously wished happened or wished didn’t happen? And when memories get blurry and details disappear and you remember only the sharpest, most intense feelings you experienced during them, can that, too, warp what you dream of? What you fantasize about? And simultaneously, how much performance goes into sex, or in this case, a seduction? To what degree are you playing a role that you know the other person wants? To what degree are you playing a role that you want to be perceived as?

The Funding

Funds raised will be distributed among the following departments:

Thank you so much for reading!

All donations of any amount are truly so appreciated, even just a buck makes a difference! And if donating isn’t possible, sharing our campaign with friends and family is just as helpful!

Again, thank you for your time and consideration,

Ava

Other work:

CHERRY on Vimeo, on YouTube

DIE GRETCHENFRAGE on YouTube

Website