Happy Birthday Stefan is an Pinteresque comedy short film following Stefan, an early 20s pre-med student. After a long day, Stefan comes home to find his family and friends have thrown a surprise party for him. The only problem is it’s not his birthday, and he’s never met any of these people in his life.
This work, while standing alone as solely a chaotically psychedelic milieu, further serves as a repurposed trenchant political allegory on the current crisis of democratic backsliding and populist rhetoric in the United States.
Happy Birthday Stefan allows viewers to contemplate the danger of U.S democracy being overturned, and who dictates whether or not this happens. In the age of the “uninformed voter,” and amidst the political regression sweeping the nation, exemplified from insurrection to reproductive rights restriction to rampant civilian onslaught, this message has never been more relevant.
Structurally the observes as Stefan- a stand in for populist ideology- comedically transforms from extra-terrestrial oddity to social chameleon, quickly picking up on the perks of opportunistic manipulation, rabble-rousing, and carefully placed persuasion. As many unseemly events unfold around him, the gift wrapped fabric of family and friendship are ripped to shreds,
with the birthday boy the only winner. His arc is tragically subversive, as our light-hearted sympathies grow to deeply rooted animus, and the film ends with tensions all but resolved. We start off laughing at the characters on screen, and end crying for our nation, as we are taken through 4 color centric scenes, each representative of an aspect of the American flag’s ideals tarnished by populism.
The style of the film can be described as a theater adjacent, mongrel dog of reference. Shot on held-held and favoring shaky dutch-style close ups, the cinematography of the film preserves the life and rhythm of 60s French New-Wave run-and-gun. The hot flashes of patriotic fervor (emblematic reds, whites, and blues) pull from Spanish surrealist cinematography. Yet the film compiles a pastiche milieu of political art history from the tasteful, polychromatic frenzy of Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) or Saura’s Peppermint Frappe (1967) to the sexy, uber-modern contestation of Araki’s The Doom Generation (1995) riffing on Mescondi Y2K aesthetic and associated fashion photography. We pay homage to other politically allegorical works such as Papatakis Thanos and Despina (1967, A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966), and of course Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1959).
Happy Birthday Stefan was created as a proof of concept for the newly founded student organization 48 Frames Films, a BIPOC centered student organization dedicated to providing marketing, distribution, and production services for BIPOC artists on campus at the University of Michigan. 48 Frames was founded out of a need to foster a greater platform for BIPOC artists, to champion the diverse array of experiences at the University of Michigan. BIPOC creatives don’t have the same opportunities in the Michigan film space. Representation is severely limited in on-campus productions. BIPOC students are rarely behind the camera in directorial, writing, and production roles. Only three of forty four classes offered in the film, television, and media department focus on BIPOC film topics and only 20% of FTVM faculty are people of color. 30% of the students in the two most popular film organizations on campus (Filmic and M-agination) are BIPOC. As a consulting-based platform developed to handle technical areas of film production, marketing, and distribution, 48 Frames frees up artists’ creative bandwidth, which they can use to experiment creatively. By consulting with artists one-on-one, locating project needs, and developing a plan/ timeline, we work to provide them with resources necessary to bring their ideas to fruiting. Marketing resources include press kits, social media graphics, trailers, reviews, and press coverage. Distribution resources include on-campus distribution in student social hotspots and off-campus distribution at Festivals. Production partnering resources include crew building, production supervision, budgeting & financing assistance.
Since its completion, Happy Birthday Stefan embodies the potential of our organization. It has gone on to receive numerous awards and recognition internationally throughout the festival circuit. Most recently, it received a Selection for Lift Off Global Network First Time Filmmaker Sessions Selection and Goa Short Film Festival. On campus, the film premiered in coordination with Vail cooperative housing and Michigan Electronic Music Collective as part of their SYNCED Vol. 1 event, alongside Matt Nurick’s 2020 CRT thinkpiece on grief in the digital age RealMenDon’tCry. Yet this is only the beginning of the project’s journey. Our hopes are that the film continues to inspire students to create politically subversive content on their terms. Built due to the hard work of an international crew from Montenegro to Miami, the film speaks to the power of youth collectivity and the possibility of productive creative synergy, that we hope will blossom at a larger scale in years to come. We hope to challenge and inspire students to take greater risks with their work, be bolder, more expressive, and more true to themselves through the film medium.
Promotional Poster for Happy Birthday Stefan
In the coming months, 48 Frames plans to bolster the impact of the film and its connection to the community while shifting our attention towards other projects in the community. We plan to release the film on streaming platforms alongside archived behind the scenes footage, memorabilia, and commentary about the project via social media.
The mini grant funds were used to support the screening of Happy Birthday Stefan as part of the VAIL X MEMCO X 48 Frames’ SYNCED Vol. 1 event. Specifically the funds went towards video and sound equipment, venue costs, and beverage purchase.
By working with my Library mentor Professor Phil Hallman, I was able to receive incredible insight into the ways in which I could better distribute this project across campus. The double bill screening event idea was one he helped me arrive at and Professor Hallman worked tirelessly to ensure the event came to fruition, connecting me to campus contacts, giving me feedback on project development, and pointing me towards campus resources. As a mentor, supporter, and connoisseur of the arts, I could not have asked for better guidance throughout the process.