Born from the creative limitations and social restrictions of Covid-19 lockdown, New Strains is a resourceful exercise in low-budget DIY cinema which was written, directed, shot, edited and produced by its two stars, Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan. Crucially, it is also great fun. Despite a slender, disjointed narrative that never really adds up to more than a hill of beans, this emphatically lo-fi duo inject plenty of goofy charm and visual invention into their first joint feature project.
New Strains was filmed on a vintage Hi-8 video camera, which explains its scratchy look and boxy 4:3 aspect ratio. The directors, who are married in real life, have a background in teaching film theory and screenwriting. There is certainly skill and technique at work behind their surface air of slacker amateurism, alongside pleasing stylistic nods to classic US indie cinema. World premiering in competition in Rotterdam, this genial Generation Z rom-com feels fresh and funny enough to score healthy festival buzz and art-house distribution potential.
Still in the awkward early stages of their relationship, endearingly dorky twentysomething bohemians Kallia (Shaw) and Ram (Kamalakanthan) arrive in New York City for a short holiday. Almost immediately, the latest wave of an unnamed Covid-style pandemic brings a strict new travel ban into force, grounding the couple at Kallia’s uncle’s apartment for the foreseeable future. As time slows down, Ram becomes increasingly paranoid about infection risk, throwing a jealous tantrum after Kallia runs into an old flame in a nearby park. The giddy buzz of new love soon descends into childish bickering, sulks and mood swings.
Between arguments, Kallia and Ram also share tender moments, have sex, experiment with baking, take online fitness classes, watch terrifying TV news bulletins and lose track of time. Lockdown limbo in a nutshell, in other words. But mostly they just make rambling conversation about life, love, art, music and cinema. Which looks random and feels inconsequential, but New Strains proves to be consistently dry, funny and well-observed. Winningly, Shaw and Kamalakanthan are happy to make themselves the butt of the joke, with the pomposity of Ram the main satirical target, a self-styled “hip-hop educator” with a niche line in “deconstructed intellectual social-justice rap” that nobody wants to hear.
The back story to New Strains could hardly be more DIY. Back in 2020, during the early stages of the pandemic, Shaw rediscovered the antique Hi-8 video camera she first used as an aspiring teenage film-maker. After she and Kamalakanthan managed to revive the camera, they devised a home-made production to match its clunky low-res look. This fuzzily nostalgic aesthetic became a defining element of the film, which is stitched together from jarring edits, jerky automated zoom shots, bleached-out colours and fizzy static lines that dance across the screen. It sometimes grates when millennial hipsters fetishise the trashy home-tech formats of yesteryear as quaint retro-chic signifiers, but Shaw and Kamalakanthan explore this visual grammar in a playful, inventive way. There is plenty of artfulness in their self-consciously artless approach.
Plenty of actual art too, with the duo using canvas paintings on the apartment walls as recurring motifs in their patchwork narrative. In interviews, the directors explain their intention was to suggest the characters being frozen in time by lockdown, almost turning into a still-life painting themselves. Which is perhaps slightly too esoteric a concept to convey in a micro-budget chamber drama, but there is undoubtedly something of the art gallery about the film’s ramshackle, lightly experimental cine-collage texture.
With its conversational style, ironic humour and narrow domestic focus, New Strains frequently feels like a knowing throwback to early 1980s NYC indie-movie pioneers like Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Beth B and Alexandre Rockwell. There are even faint echoes of Slava Tsukerman’s pulp sci-fi classic Liquid Sky (1982) here, notably in Will Epstein’s wonky lo-fi score, which sounds like it was recorded on a toy piano in a junk shop basement. At less than 80 minutes, this brittle boho two-hander is a little too lightweight as narrative, not much more than a scrappy snapshot. Even so, it is full of wit and charm. A small film, but big on personality.
Directors, screenwriters: Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan
Cast: Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Cynthia Talmadge, Olivier Sherman
Cinematography, editing: Prashanth Kamalakanthan
Music: Will Epstein
Producers: Artemis Shaw, Kate Stahl
Production company: Parori Productions (US)
World sales: Alief SA
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Tiger Competition)
In English
78 minutes
