On Sunday, select members of the Tech community were treated to one of the most rare and unusual of experiences in a COVID-19 world: a live musical performance.

On the stage of the Ferst Center, guitarist and composer Kaki King performed her new multimedia show in front of a filming crew and an audience spaced appropriately far away. The concert was recorded for release to the public on Oct. 24 to celebrate the debut of King’s newest album, “Modern Yesterdays.”

King, an Atlanta native, has toured around the country and has had work featured on the sound tracks of films like “August Rush” and “Into the Wild.”

The artist is well known for the innovation, idiosyncrasy and sheer virtuosity of her work. Her forays into image projection coupled with her unmatched technique have made her one of the most brilliant and compelling guitarists of her generation. She effortlessly combines technology and music in her performances.

On the stage of the Ferst Center, however, dressed in bright pants and a cropped blouse and bereft of her signature massive sunglasses, King is just a woman; a woman with a guitar, messing with the cords and cables, tuning her instrument, making small talk with the crew that echoes from her mic into a mostly empty house.

A warm pool of yellow light in the center of the dark stage gives her two guitars a sacred air.

King introduces her album informally.

“This is an escapist style of music,” she says, “it’s not really about anything … I hope this gives you wiggle room in your brain to feel how you need to feel today.”

The guitar she picks up is white and has an intense light projecting over its surface, making it the brightest thing on the stage.

When she begins her first song, “Default Shell,” there is an explosion — not just of sound, but of light and color, bursting over the surface of the guitar in a hypnotic kaleidoscope of shapes, patterns and motions.

King’s signature use of visual as well as auditory art makes her live shows a uniquely synesthetic experience.

In one of the breaks between songs she explains how it works, with a system that translates the notes into visual cues for the imagery on the guitar.

The VR setup is a newer way of doing things for her; previously, the guitar was held in place while she played and projected the image. Now, the technology tracks the instrument, giving her the freedom to move around while she plays.

Highlights of the concert include “Can’t Touch This Or That Or You Or My Face,” which King has already released as a single, and “Night After Sidewalk,” which featured on her 2003 album “Everybody Loves You.”

King has reworked “Night After Sidewalk” using a device inside the soundhole of her guitar that picks up the overtones of the notes and returns them back with electronic reverberations.

Another track, “Puzzle Me-You” deals with the especially damaging fires on the West Coast; as King plays, plumes of smoke and flame mushroom across her guitar.

“Turning a disastrous thing into something beautiful is,” she says “its own kind of statement.”

Many of the songs that she takes on tour she describes as “embryos” that she will work and rework on stage. This improvisational process is the part she likes the most, and it is not always easy for her to nail down when exactly a song is finished.

King does not just strum or pick the guitar — she slaps it, she clicks her nails across it, she plays the frets like the keys of a piano. Each song is a waterfall of sound; at times, the melody becomes almost indiscernible.

For the last two songs of her show, “Teak” and “Nails,” she uses a device called a Passerelle that bridges the strings of her guitar and transforms it into a different instrument altogether. King invented the Passerelle in collaboration with another musician, yet another way of breaking the boundaries of her craft.

When asked where her inspiration comes from, King answers with a joke — “There’s this really cool place in Queens …”

In seriousness though, she says her inspiration comes from “pain, deadlines, and fear … whatever it is I’m going through comes out musically.”

It is her way of “getting out of emotional trouble.” She says, “I’m not writing these things to make a statement … I’m writing them to get away from the moment. And I think that’s okay. Creative people get too much credit,” she adds, “Creativity isn’t limited to a person with a paintbrush or an instrument. Life is creative.”

King first brought her music to Tech in 2018 with “The Bridge Is A Neck to The Body,” her first tour to incorporate her signature multimedia performances. She has since returned to the Institute to offer a masterclass in the use of the Passerelle.

GT Arts strives to “partner with artists who are curious about using technology as part of their storytelling,” says Marketing Specialist Elizabeth Geiger.

King is a perfect fit for this endeavor. Her reimagination of her instrument and the visionary nature of her live show is exemplary of the things that can be done with technology and art.

Georgia Tech Arts will stream the recorded world premiere concert of “Modern Yesterdays” from the Ferst Center on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 8 p.m.

Registration is free and King will be in attendance for a live virtual Q&A.

Learn more at arts.gatech.edu.

Over the past two weekends, DramaTech, Tech’s student-run theatre company, managed to successfully pull off what many have attempted but have accomplished since the onset of pandemic: an immersive, virtual, live theatre performance. With a cast of only five but a crew of over 50, DramaTech delivered a quirky interpretation of “45 Plays for 45 Presidents.”

The play by Karen Weinberg, Chloe Johnson, Genevra Gallo-Bayaites, Sean Benjamin and Andrew Bayiates takes viewers through a rapid-fire history of the U.S. presidential office. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes confusing, “45 Plays for 45 Presidents” examines the past in an effort to untangle the future.

“It’s been an adjustment,” said DramaTech President and actress Gracelyn Nguyen, “but being able to continue our mission of engineering theatre is something that we can hold onto amidst the uncertainty.”

Performing arts of any kind are close to impossible right now, but DramaTech did not let COVID-19 stop them. Although the audience watched the performances from the comfort of their homes, the cast performed every show live while still doing their part to keep everyone involved safe.

DramaTech borrowed unused office spaces so that each actor could perform in their own separate room, with custom backgrounds built by a talented team of carpenters and designers. Cast and crew communicated via a comms system so that they could adhere to the building’s ten-person limit. In addition to the usual technicians, designers and engineers, a streaming technician set up the cameras, cables and video streams while a streaming designer wrote the cues and decided which videos went where when.

“There were a lot of opportunities to cut corners with safety,” said Production Manager Charlotte Parkes, “but we did it the hard way to set a good example for the campus.”

Beyond the logistical challenges of creating a virtual experience was the difficulty of telling a story between actors who were all in separate spaces. Each of the five members of the cast played an array of different presidents, regardless of race and gender, and doubled as the background cast in the meantime. In order to effectively distinguish between characters, a wide array of props and costume pieces were handed on and off “stage” regularly, including most notably the star-spangled coat representing the presidency.

But despite the challenges and gimmicks raised by a virtual format, the DramaTech cast were still able to capture the charm of live theatre. “Acting is still possible,” said Nguyen, “and I’ve had so much fun with my four castmates in finding our chemistry and what makes the show great.”

As with any show, the unsung hero of “45 Plays for 45 Presidents” was the outstanding work of the crew. Each of the five intricate sets was built so that on a screen of five rectangles, every actor’s background was similar but different. The sound was meticulously engineered to emulate a live performance, while the lighting and graphic design took advantage of the virtual format with interesting effects and imagery. Most of the show’s graphic elements were created by DramaTech students.

Even the smallest details of costuming were significant: the five star-spangled jackets, each worn by the actor playing the president, were all made to fit the size of one single actor. On the rest of the cast, it didn’t look quite right, representing the archetypes we have for our presidents and the ways they may or may not live up to that expectation.

“I’m really, really proud of all the people who came together to work on this show and how resilient and creative they have been in solving problems that no one in theater ever thought they would have,” said Parkes.

Performed less than a month before the 2020 presidential election, both cast and crew of DramaTech agree that “45 Plays for 45 Presidents” is an appropriate look back on history.

As Nguyen said it is a study “of where we’ve come from and where we need to go.” DramaTech chose to use the last few minutes of the show to encourage viewers to vote, bearing in mind both the past and future of the country.

“This is the most important election so far in our lives,” said actor Diego Varela, “and it’s important to understand the history of this country (both the good and bad) and have open dialogue about it.”

Founded in 1947, DramaTech is the South’s oldest performing arts company. Every performance in the troupe’s full season of musicals and plays is produced, acted and designed entirely by Georgia Tech students.

“Dramatech has been my home at GT,” said Jacob Parks, lighting designer and light board operator. “They’ve supported me through ups and downs of college life, and encouraged me to reach further in all parts of my life.”

Join DramaTech for their virtual Fall Festival for fun activities on Oct. 16 and 17. The events feature a Virtual Variety Show with performances from across the Tech community on Friday at 8:00 p.m. and a cook-along and movie screening on Saturday at 7:00 p.m.

Our Take: 2/5 Stars

Director Lance Hool’s “2 Hearts,” based on a true story of four people from different times and places whose lives intertwine unexpectedly, makes for an entertaining two hours that don’t quite deliver emotionally.

Starring Jacob Elordi (“The Kissing Booth”), Tiera Skovbye (“Riverdale”), Adan Canto (“Designated Survivor”) and Radha Mitchell (“Finding Neverland”), “2 Hearts” tells the story of Elordi’s Chris Gregory, a lovable but naive teenager, as he enters his freshman year of college.

Within his first month at school, Chris meets and falls deeply in love with Sam, played by Skovbye. The first half of their story centers on the blossoming romance between the two as Sam encourages Chris to get his license and improve his grades and they begin to build a life together.

Many years earlier, a teenaged Jorge, portrayed by Canto, undergoes surgery for a pulmonary condition that is expected to end his life before he reaches the age of 20. Defying his doctor’s prognosis, Jorge lives to take up a position in the lucrative family business and to meet a charming flight attendant named Leslie, played by Mitchell.

Much like Chris, Jorge knows as soon as he meets Leslie that she is the love of his life, and a whirlwind romance ensues. But Jorge’s illness is a daily reminder that he does not have any time to waste.

Based on the true story of a very real Jorge and Chris, the lives of the middle-class American and the Cuban businessman cross under unforeseeable and devastating circumstances. When a tragedy brings the two families together, all of their lives are changed forever.

Despite its inspirational plot, “2 Hearts” comes up short by making use of cliched plot devices and cinematic elements — a gurney shuttling down the hallways of a hospital, a lifetime of memories fading away Harry Potter-style — that have been seen too many times. The message the film aims to deliver is somewhat cheapened by its sugary sentimentalism.

Nevertheless, the film is salvaged by a compelling performance by Elordi, who made a name for himself in roles in Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth” and Hulu’s “Euphoria.” The Australian heartthrob is reliably charming in “2 Hearts,” bringing humor and vivacity to Chris. As the narrator and protagonist, Elordi, with his sunny smile and winning good looks, transforms a stock character into one that viewers can not help but smile along with.

Honorable mention also goes to the film’s soundtrack, including the original song “For Me, For You” by We Are the West. With its sultry guitar riffs and catchy melody, “For Me, For You” gives the film the tender touch that it lacks elsewhere.

Despite the various tropes that it plays upon and the sometimes hackneyed script, “2 Hearts” still manages to elicit genuine themes of family and the powerful force of serendipity or divine providence, depending on point of view.

The film’s central message — that life happens for you and not to you — is one that many might do well to remember.

“2 Hearts” opens in select theaters in Atlanta on Oct. 16. Learn more at 2heartsthefilm.com.

Also, you can learn more information about the Gabriel House of Care at gabrielhouseofcare.org.

No football. No Tech vs. Georgia game, no Superbowl, no College Football Championship. It is a thought that seems to loom large on the mind of many Americans, young and old, as the season draws near, it is accompanied by a general sense that the world is ending.

It is the cause of heated discussions, shakings of the head, and possibly even a tear or two from the freshly-graduated-from-high school freshman who has yet to learn the meaning of true suffering.

To which I say: you fools.

I didn’t grow up watching football, and thus I escaped the indoctrination that most American children experience wherein they are told that it is fun to watch grown men fling themselves at each other and then proceed to brawl around with no discernible goal.

You could say I came to the sport later than most, and first attended a Super Bowl party in 2019 (back when we could attend parties).

Most of the people I have told this to shake their hands, laboring under the delusion that I have been missing out on a vital part of the American existence. Believe me, I have not.

I dare you to look up the Wikipedia page titled “List of NFL players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” or CTE, an incurable degenerative brain disease that is caused by repeated head trauma and has symptoms like memory loss, depression, anxiety and eventual dementia.

The number of players who have sued the NFL for concussion-related injuries is so huge that the thousands-long list on that Wikipedia page is marked as incomplete. Additionally, a quick Google search reveals that in 2019, 224 concussions were diagnosed by the NFL, a number that is only slightly down from 261 in 2012.

A 2017 study showed that 99% of deceased NFL players who had donated their brains for research were posthumously diagnosed with CTE. The average life expectancy of an NFL player is around 55.

And it is not just strong, healthy, fully grown men who are suffering from this repeated brain trauma; studies suggest that nearly half of all concussions occur during high school football.

All that to say that football is (not-so-) slowly killing its players, and people have a strong inclination to turn a blind eye.

In 2019 the NFL announced a $3 million grant towards helmet safety research, but it does not have the greatest motivation to keep its players safe, because doing so would demand that the game change its nature. And, of course, that is not what the fans want.

Which brings me to the moral objection. Rather than watching the Falcons, I grew up reading vivid stories about Ancient Rome and the violent gladiatorial matches that were the preferred mode of entertainment. Centuries later, as I watch these athletes fling each other to the ground, as I watch the sort of animal delight that many viewers take in the sport, the comparison is inevitable. Oftentimes, the more brutal the play, the louder the audience cheers.

I don’t intend to condemn every person who enjoys watching a football game. Rather, I’d ask them to question – why do we support, glorify and feed millions of dollars into this system that continues to do so much damage? Why is football the pinnacle of American culture, society and entertainment?

There are so many other sports to be a fan of, to spend your hours and your dollars watching. Basketball. Soccer. Baseball, my personal favorite (as long as you are not a Yankees fan).

There are many, many other ways to get the same thrill without watching grown men bang their brains to bits. The world may very well be ending, but it certainly isn’t because there might not be any football to watch for the foreseeable future.

Our Take: 2/5 Stars

Netflix’s latest star-studded film, “The Devil All the Time,” directed and co-written by Anthony Campos (“Afterschool”) and based on Donald Pollock’s novel of the same name, is a sinister take on the Southern Gothic tradition.
Set in the deeply religious towns of Knockemstiff, Ohio and Coal Creek, West Virginia, the film follows a colorful cast of characters — a World War II veteran and his family, a serial-killing couple, a corrupted police officer, and a few degenerate Bible-thumpers — across decades of bloodshed, lust, and misery.

The film is the latest in a spate of beautifully-made and stunningly-acted Netflix films that fall short due to hiccups in the plot and storytelling. The opening scene finds Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård, “IT”), a U.S. soldier in the Solomon Islands, discovering the crucified body of a fellow soldier.

The gruesome religious imagery haunts Willard — and the film — for the rest of his life. He goes on to marry, settle down in Knockemstiff, and have a son named Arvin. But misery does not stay away for long.

When sickness comes to the Russell household, Willard’s already feverish religious devotion turns maniacal.

Starting at the 45 minute mark, the film focuses on Arvin, played by Tom Holland (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”). Now a young man living with his grandparents, Arvin has inherited a violent temperament and deep-rooted trauma from his father. Despite this, he harbors great affection for his found family in Coal Creek and specifically his adopted sister, Lenore (“Eliza Scanlen, “Little Women”). But Arvin can’t outrun the sort of macabre events that shaped his childhood. Trouble arrives in the form of Preston Teagardin, a charismatic new Reverend played to subtle, scummy perfection by Robert Pattinson (“Tenet”).

Behind Teagardin’s magnetism and religious fervor bubbles depravity and perversion, as Arvin soon learns. Forced to come to terms with the undoing of his family and the evil around him, Arvin reacts in the only way he knows how — with violence.

Willard and Arvin both cross paths at different times with other characters, who in turn weave in and out of each other’s lives, most often for the worse. The merit of the film rests largely on the shoulders of two superheroes: Tom Holland, darling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Robert Pattinson, DC’s latest Batman. Holland brings sensitivity, compassion, and keen intensity to a character that might, in less skilled hands, have been just as despicable as the rest. The remarkable expressivity and emotional range that Holland is known for are on full display in “The Devil All The Time,” and his Arvin is one that you root for and sympathize with despite everything.

Opposite Holland is Pattinson as one of the most abominable characters in film rife with abomination. Pattinson’s lascivious, despicable Reverend Teagardin makes the viewer’s skin crawl, complete with a pointy
Southern twang.

Arguably the best scenes in the film are the ones between Pattinson and Holland, where every glance and every movement are heavy with significance and the tension is near unbearable, complemented by Campos’s meticulous shots.

Both Holland and Pattinson prove the range of their abilities, far beyond the stereotypes that made them famous. Both demonstrate new breadth and new depth; and both can not seem to stop outperforming themselves.

Despite masterful performances by Holland and Pattinson and notable appearances by Bill Skarsgard, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan, Eliza Scanlen, and Harry Melling, “The Devil All the Time” ultimately disappoints. At the end, the viewer is left wondering what the point of it was.

At just over two hours, it simply is not long enough to flesh out the stories of such a tangled knot of characters. By the time the credits roll, there are more questions left than answers. One might even wonder why most of those characters are in the story at all — it seems that their only purpose was to add another level of filth and iniquity to an already sordid plot.

The film portrays the long shadow cast by war, the passing on of generational trauma, and the abuse of power by organized religion; it uncovers the muck and grime beneath the surface of Southern congeniality.
But in the end, it offers no redemption — not for its characters, and not for their wanton bloodshed, lechery and monstrosity. The only character who gets any sort of vindication is Arvin, and one can hope he has finally broken out of the cycle of violence perpetuated by his family, his surroundings, and himself. But that is not enough.

The most obvious theme of the film is the misuse of organized religion and specifically Christianity by those who would twist it to their own ends. Some of the evilest, most crazed characters are men of faith: Preston Teagardin, Roy Laferty, Willard Russell. Their hair-raising sermons, impassioned calls upon the Lord and blood-curdling deeds all warn of religion in the hands of men — or men in the hands of religion.

In the end, the viewer is left to question if God had a hand in their sins, or if it really was the devil all the time.

Our Take: 4/5 Stars

Netflix’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is many things, but straightforward is not one of them.

Directed and written by Charlie Kaufman — best known as the screenwriter of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” — and based on the novel of the same title by Iain Reid, the film is a kaleidoscope of time and memory. The film is fractured, it is difficult to tell dream and reality apart and so dense that it demands a second or third viewing.

Watching “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” without any preexisting knowledge of the plot is a deeply perplexing experience. Finishing it feels like waking up from a fevered dream.

Every scene, word, gesture and set piece is laden with meaning that is overlooked during a first viewing; it is a film made for rewatching.

Kaufman’s carefully choreographed shots, reminiscent in some ways of Wes Anderson, have a hypnotic, almost claustrophobic effect on the viewer.

Jessie Buckley’s (“Chernobyl”) Lucy is the ultimate unreliable narrator as the audience begins to question whether or not she actually exists. Buckley is brilliant in the role, bringing warmth and humanity to an otherwise confusing and confused character.

Opposite her is Jesse Plemons (“Breaking Bad”) as the awkward, tender-hearted, terrifying Jake. Without giving away too much of the plot, Plemons does a remarkable job of portraying an ostensibly innocuous character who takes on more and more weight as the movie goes on.

The movie begins with a young woman, presumably named Lucy — or Lucille or Louise — who is setting out on a snowy road trip with her boyfriend, Jake. The couple, who have been dating for a month, or six weeks, or seven (Lucy can’t remember how many), are on their way to meet Jake’s parents for the first time at the farm he grew up in. But Lucy, who narrates the movie, tells us that she is “thinking of ending things” with Jake.
She can’t put a finger on it exactly, but she knows that something is deeply and horribly wrong.

The genius of the movie is a permeating sense of wrongness that settles in, at first subtly, and then more and more obviously. It only intensifies as Lucy and Jake arrive at the farmhouse and meet his parents. From there, the plot spirals into a series of increasingly odd and disturbing events that renders time, age, place, age, and reality meaningless: Jake’s parents are both old and young; Lucy finds her paintings in the basement and her poetry in a book; she is described alternately as a physicist, a painter, a poet, a waitress. She can not seem to stop manically laughing.

Her inner dialogue becomes more and more discombobulated.

The ever-more unsettling events that the protagonist experiences are interspersed throughout the film with shots of a janitor going about his day with heavy, inexplicable significance. After Lucy and Jake finally leave the farmhouse to head home, the film only gets more weird and more disjointed. Their dialogue bounces furiously from topic to topic, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, bristling with all manner of literary and cultural references as Lucy loses control of her narrative — if she ever had it.

The film reaches its peculiar climax at Jake’s old highschool, occupied only by the janitor sweeping its halls in the middle of the night in a snowstorm. The pivotal scene is a beautiful pas de deux performed to Jay Wadley’s dreamy, melancholic score that tells the story of what might have been between Jack and Lucy. The ballet is the key to a nearly indecipherable plot and a rare glimpse of light amid the remaining two hours of morbidity.

Buckley and Plemons’ beautifully subtle performances are complemented by Toni Collette (“Hereditary”) and David Thewlis (“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”), who play Jake’s parents. Both Collette and Thewlis are superb, bringing squirming discomfort and understated horror to their scenes.
Ultimately, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” can be interpreted in two different ways.

It can be viewed as an irredeemable waste of time: an utterly discombobulated, meaningless film with no observable plot and an incomprehensible ending that makes less sense with every passing moment.

Or it can be interpreted as Kaufman’s freakish exploration of one man’s experience with loneliness and hopelessness, punctuated by grim reflections on time, existence, and meaning that will resonate long after the credits roll.

Give it a watch and decide which it will be.

The 2020 Atlanta Film Festival (ATLFF) has differed from the 43 that preceded it for a few reasons. For one thing, the festival received a record-breaking 8,550 submissions from which a programming team working since May 2019 selected only 148 for screening at the festival.

For another, the festival, which historically takes place in the spring, was pushed to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Associate Director Cameron McAllister remembers when the pandemic hit in March, “We were like ‘We don’t know what we’re doing but we’re not doing it now.’”

Nevertheless, the 2020 festival retained almost all of its original programming, albeit in a virtual or drive-in format rather than the traditional movie theater screenings that have been rendered nearly obsolete by the virus.

“Nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our filmmakers, attendees, staff and volunteers,” said ATLFF’s Executive Director Christopher Escobar, “It became obvious that this adjustment was the only way to achieve our goals this year.”

McAllister admits that there are some drawbacks to a drive-in format. Films can only be shown at night, for instance, and not everyone is comfortable leaving their house right now, much less attending a drive-in. But he was happy with the turnout on the festival’s opening night last Thursday at all three of the screening venues — Dad’s Garage Drive-In, Pullman Yard and the Plaza Theatre Drive-In.

“Just because it’s not pulpy doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed for a drive-in festival,” said McAllister.

The Atlanta Film Festival, one of only two-dozen Academy Award qualifying festivals in the U.S., is hallmarked by its commitment to diversity both in the stories being told and the people telling them. Of the 38 features, 86 shorts and 14 creative media (including music videos and virtual reality experiences), 55 percent are created by female filmmakers and 51 percent are directed by people of color.

The festival’s specialty titles include “New Mavericks,” “Pink Peach,” “¡CineMás!,” “Noire,” and “Georgia”, which feature female, LGBTQ+, Latin America, Black and local representation in film, respectively. The festival also features an additional eight Marquee screenings and 32 Creative Conference virtual events.

“Our selections bring the most compelling visual storytelling the world has to offer to Atlanta, while also representing the rich diversity of the city itself,” said Escobar.

Some of the highlights of the closing weekend lineup (September 25-27) include Pablo Larrain’s “Ema,” which McAllister describes as a “brain-melting colorful dance raggaeton extravaganza;” “Malpaso,” a black-and-white film about two twin brothers directed by Héctor Valdez; and “Sylvie’s Love,” Eugene Ashe’s wartime jazz lounge romance. Saturday’s closing night presentation is Julie Taymor’s “The Glorias” at the Plaza Theatre Drive-In, starring Julianne Moore as legendary feminist, activist and journalist Gloria Steinem.

Saturday’s lineup also includes a narrative short film block called “What’s Up With the Youth?” at Dad’s Garage Drive-In, described as “young souls make their way in an old world.” Ninna Pálmadóttir’s “Paperboy” heads up the program.

“Paperboy” tells the story of a small town newspaper delivery boy, based on an experience that Pálmadóttir herself had of unburdening her soul to a total stranger who she never saw again.

The film was shot in a small town on the east coast of Iceland, Pálmadóttir’s home country; coming as it did from such a spectacular part of the world, Pálmadóttir strove to incorporate nature not just into a frame but into the story and the lives of her characters.

“I’m excited to show a film from the tiny island that is Iceland to audiences that don’t see a lot of snow and ice,” she said.

Charlotte Benbeniste’s “Bye Bye Body,” which follows “Paperboy,” tells in ten minutes the story of a young woman named Nina who is attending a weight loss camp and can’t seem to reach her goal weight.

The film is derived from Benbeniste’s own experience at a weight loss camp, which she describes as “an absurd, surreal experience” that, retrospectively, became a forum for “aspirational thinking to do with the female body.” Benbeniste shot “Bye Bye Body” on 35mm film, which gave it a sense of tactility that reflected the film’s focus on body and touch.

“Broken Bird,” also a part of “What’s Up With the Youth?” is written, directed and produced by Rachel Harrison Gordon. A coming-of-age short, it follows a biracial girl named Birdie as she prepares for her Bat Mitzvah.

The film is largely autobiographical — Gordon lived in the same family structure and felt the same disconnect from Judaism as Birdie. For a long time, she says, she didn’t feel white enough, Black enough or Jewish enough. It took her years to feel comfortable in what she calls “this hybrid skin.”

Birdie also shares a similar relationship with her father with Gordon, who connected with her father through music “when we didn’t know how else to communicate.” Tender, whimsical, and poignant, “Broken Bird” explores identity, race and family and journeys deep into Gordon’s own memories.

Tickets for “What’s Up With the Youth?” and the rest of the weekend’s offerings, along with information on virtual screenings and Creative Conference events, are available online at AtlantaFilmFestival.com. Find Pálmadóttir, Benbeniste, and Gordon at ninnapalma.com, charlottebenbeniste.tv, and rachelhg.com.

Makenna Carroll, who graduated from the Scheller College of Business in 2011, will be returning to Tech on Sept. 10 to participate in the next installment of TECHnically Creative, Georgia Tech Art’s virtual series featuring alumni in creative fields.

Since graduating, Carroll has occupied various roles at companies in the fashion and retail space, including Marchesa, Elie Tahari and Club Monaco.
She currently holds the position of senior product manager for Adidas at the company’s headquarters in Portland, OR.

During her five years at Adidas, Carroll has focused on telling consumer-relevant stories around the company’s lifestyle footwear.

TECHnically Creative is a relatively new series hosted by Georgia Tech Arts that features virtual interviews with Tech alumni who are working in the arts.

The series is an exciting opportunity for students to see how their degree from Tech can be used to explore their passions in a variety of creative fields. Creativity is as relevant and important to a degree from Tech as any technical skill; TECHnically Creative aims to expand our appreciation of it as part of the Tech experience.

As Tech Arts puts it: “While many Yellow Jackets go into careers in line with what they studied at school, there are some who find themselves putting their degrees to use within creative industries.”

Past participants in TECHnically Creative have included Russ Todd, EE ‘90, who is a managing partner at Akustics, an acoustic design firm. Another participant, Megan Fechter, BSBA ‘17, is a founder of The Reverie, a female creative coworking space in Atlanta.

Other participants have included an owner of a Liberian boutique, professional photographers, a VR gaming software executive; and a third-generation professional wood turner.

Georgia Tech Arts, a division of Student Life, explores the intersection of arts and technology on campus.

The organization seeks to connect professional artists with the campus community and to integrate these artists into the classroom.

Georgia Tech Arts also offers several ways for students to get involved with the arts on campus. Some of these activities include the Clough Art Crawl and ACCelerate. Find out more at arts.gatech.edu.

TECHnically Creative with Makenna Carroll will be livestreamed on Georgia Tech Arts’ Facebook page.

Register online to ask a question in advance.

When Ben Gossow, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student at Tech, was sent home in March midway through his semester abroad, he didn’t pick up bread-baking, Animal Crossing, or any of the standard quarantine hobbies. Instead, he dropped an album.

What started as something he mentioned jokingly to his mom — “What if I just record these songs?” — became “The Annual,” a seven-song record that deals with themes of nostalgia, growth and the passage of time.

Gossow attributes the beginning of his musical journey to his dad, who he describes as “a musician but not in the professional sense.” Growing up in St. Louis, he listened to a lot of bluegrass and picked up guitar in elementary school.

His real appreciation for music, however, came when he started playing trombone in his school’s band program in the sixth grade. Gossow participated in band all the way through his senior year, teaching himself piano and guitar along the way.

Midway through high school he started a band called “Beatrix Kiddo” with his buddies, which got him started song writing. Still, a solo project was always in the back of his mind.

In college, he started experimenting with more instruments — bass, synthesizer — and writing more songs, needing a creative outlet to contrast his school work in the ME program. The turmoil of the corona virus outbreak created, for Gossow, the perfect storm.

He returned home with a fresh perspective from being separated from his instruments while abroad. After three days in quarantine, fueled by a ton of pent-up energy and “more time spent sitting in my room than ever in my life,” Gossow “opened the faucet,” and music came out.

“The Annual” features acoustic, electrical and bass guitar, piano, synthesizer, drums and trombone, all played by Gossow himself. He intentionally constrained himself to recording every instrument on the album, using only sounds that he had played with his own hands. Many of the sound effects on the various tracks — cicadas and frog sounds, for instance — Gassow captured on his iPhone. The sound of a child’s voice audible throughout the album is his own, sampled from old home videos.

The album is a deeply personal expression of Gossow’s perspective as a 20-year-old college student, looking back at his childhood and forward to the future, finding closure for the latter and hope for the former. The idea of leaving behind his childhood and realizing that every day takes him further away from it is one that haunts him. This sentiment is embodied in “Now Is Not The Time,” where Gossow sings “Moving further / Every single day / Lost behind me / Every single day.”

One of the standout songs on the album is “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” a cover of the infamous song by Otis Redding. The original is one of Gossow’s personal favorites; he describes it as an upbeat, happy tune with existential, almost depressing lyrics. Gossow gives it his own flavor with calming sound bites, understated strums of the guitar, and his own wistful vocals. The track, like most on the album, comes back to time, and the way it never stops moving forward, “even if you’re sitting in that one moment, on the dock of the bay.”

Another notable track is “The Seasons,” an eight-minute, fully instrumental masterpiece that takes the listener from the beginning of spring to the very last day of winter. Gossow struggled to find the lyrics for the piece until he realized that it didn’t need them; words, he said, “would get in the way.” Many of the songs on the track deal with the existential dread that Gossow has faced, but “The Seasons” is different — it’s a reminder that the passage of time can be beautiful and humbling as well as frightening, that with it comes growth. As Gossow says himself, “at the end of winter, spring always comes around again.”

“Annual,” the titular — and possibly the best — track off the album, is inspired by a camping trip to Lesterville, Missouri that Gossow has taken nearly every year since he was born. It is something of a sacred experience for him. The people there, he says, “are so unlike any other people I’ve met in my life.” Music is a central part of the experience, and the hours-long jamming sessions heavily influenced “The Annual,” which is the perfect soundtrack for sitting by a campfire under the stars.

“Annual,” the song, has the strongest narrative of all the tracks on the album, and for a reason. It tells the story of Gossow’s experience on the trip this past year, when he woke up troubled by an unusually vivid dream. Later that day, he had a heated discussion with a drunk, older man that made him stop and think.

“You are so confident you know how this world works,” he remembers the man telling him, “but you don’t. Nobody does.”

That night, Gossow recalls walking off into the dark, away from the lights of the campfires. He wandered into a field a little ways away, stars shining overhead and fireflies dancing in the grass.

Crickets and cicadas were singing, and Gossow took out his phone to record the sound.

It was a magical moment for him, a reminder of how small he was on the scale of the whole universe.

“The Annual” is available now on most streaming services, as well as on chesirelnrecords.com.

Find Ben on Instagram and YouTube, @bengossow.

When Archel Bernard graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Science, Technology and Communication, she had a goal: to become the Oprah Winfrey of West Africa. Soon after, she moved back to her home country of Liberia in pursuit of that dream. However, she quickly found that the country was too poor to support that kind of lifestyle journalism in a sustainable way, and realized that more than the fame and success she wanted a connection with people. Instead of becoming a television personality, Bernard found success in designing and creating West African-inspired dresses that she wore on camera and then began to sell.
Bernard opened her own boutique in Monrovia, Liberia in 2013, selling bold, brightly colored dresses and accessories. The Ebola outbreak a year later forced her to close her doors, but Bernard wouldn’t leave her shop and her employees behind. The pandemic helped her to realize that she had built what she calls “a selfish business” that served no one but herself. She reopened with a fresh perspective and a new vision for the shop: to build a business that served the community she loved.

Now, the Bombchel Factory and Mango Rags Boutique in Monrovia employ over ten girls from around the area, giving them opportunities they might not otherwise have had to get involved with fashion, learn skills, and begin to build their own businesses. Bernard’s all-female staff includes Ebola survivors who are earning salaries and working towards self-sufficiency. They are learning to read, supporting their children’s education with their paychecks, and taking the first steps to breaking into the fashion industry with their own boutiques.

“We have to get past the point of buying cheap clothing because it’s cheap,” says Bernard of her boutique, “Because somewhere in the world, a garment maker is paying the true cost.”

Earlier this year, Bernard’s life was changed by a second pandemic — this time COVID-19. She was in the U.S. when the outbreak began and ended up back in Atlanta where she had grown up. But characteristically, Bernard didn’t let a virus stop her. In October, she’ll be opening a second boutique in Ponce City Market, one of Atlanta’s most iconic destinations. The PCM location will sell Bombchel Factory’s lavish dresses, tees, sets, jewelry, and masks.

With the death of George Floyd and subsequent civil rights movement that swept the nation, Bernard has observed an increased interest in Black-owned small businesses.

But she is still the only Black-owned clothing store in Ponce — and that’s something, she says, that has to change. Bernard’s parents came to the United States as refugees from war in Liberia and became a part of the city’s ecosystem.

Establishing her shop in this community, Bernard says, is her way of representing their history and that of others like them.

Bernard describes Atlanta as “the best place to be if you’re Black,” so she wonders why it is that among the city’s renowned fashion designers, not one is Black.

In an effort to change that, one quarter of the space in her boutique will be dedicated to the work of Black female designers.

“We need to create Atlanta legends from here,” she says, “I never saw someone who looked like me opening a store like this.”

As a part of Tech’s Alumni Association, Bernard says that her GT network has been incredibly supportive of her journey across continents and industries.

The first time she ever voted was in the Tech Student Center, and she recalls seeing Barack Obama and John Lewis’- names on her ballot.

But it doesn’t seem like that long ago to Bernard that things were very different: when her grandmother was growing up, women, much less Black women, weren’t allowed to attend schools like Tech.

The only people at Georgia Tech who looked like her grandmother were doing the cleaning. Bernard can’t talk about her grandmother, who introduced her to retail with her job at JC Penney’s, without tearing up.

“Now we can be in any place that we want to be,” she says, “We have to have good businesses and we have to do things that will make the people before us proud. We owe it to people like John Lewis to keep dreaming the big dreams.”

When asked about the future, Bernard looks at the still-boarded-up walls of her shop and says, “This is it.”

It’s time to get past “selfish” businesses: “Brown girls will feel exceptional, and everyone will be welcomed. Everything we do has to be to make a better future for them.”

Bombchel will be opening on the second floor of Ponce City Market on October 7. Tech students can receive 50% off a pair of the shop’s signature hoops with their Buzzcard. Find Bombchel online at shopbombchel.com and follow their Instagram @shopbombchel. Follow Bernard
@itsarchel.