You Weren’t Familiar but You Weren’t Afraid
by ITZIAR BARRIO
TEASER
SYNOPSIS
REVIEWS
POSTER
CREDITS
STILLS
During these moments, the film seems to pause to live-annotate itself—Barrio builds footnotes
and appendixes into the work to interrogate, in real time, “scriptedness” and
concepts surrounding labor. Players speak directly to the camera between run-throughs
while answering deep questions given to them by the director.(...)
You Weren’t Familiar but You Weren’t Afraid keeps us suspended between the poles of
Paul B. Preciado and Franco Farina, between desire and work, between passion and practicality,
between the individual and the communal. Something’s stirring in this amorphous
yet fertile space—it might be the potential for genuine social impact.
- Anthony Hawley, ArtForum
Barrio’s genre-fucking is generative and liberating. Narrative, reenactment, fracturing, remix,
and improvisation are approached sans a tyrannical hierarchy of form. We tumble alongside Stella
through time,space, and storyline, frequently pivotingout of the narrative to view it from another angle.(...)
Within the cerebral bath of theory and pop culture, You Weren’t Familiar but You Weren’t Afraid
emotes the exciting, strenuous feeling of grasping for revolutionary solutions.
It examines relational dynamics to understand the systems that bind us.
It immerses us deeply in our world to offer possibilities and alternatives.
- Jillian McManemin, The Brooklyn Rail
and improvisation are approached sans a tyrannical hierarchy of form. We tumble alongside Stella
through time,space, and storyline, frequently pivotingout of the narrative to view it from another angle.(...)
Within the cerebral bath of theory and pop culture, You Weren’t Familiar but You Weren’t Afraid
emotes the exciting, strenuous feeling of grasping for revolutionary solutions.
It examines relational dynamics to understand the systems that bind us.
It immerses us deeply in our world to offer possibilities and alternatives.
- Jillian McManemin, The Brooklyn Rail
