We all do what we gotta do to pass – except Marc. Desperate to finish his final paper, he struggles to cram all night in the library. After dozing off, Marc awakens to discover that his paper has vanished! Looking for answers and a way out of this nightmare, Marc is drawn deeper into the mysterious and enchanting stacks. Alone in the library (or so he thinks), Marc is easily frightened and considers giving up. But the library has other plans for him….
Genre: Horror
Run Time: 45 min.
Release Date: 3/17/23 – North America
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
I was never a good student. I remember wanting to be, if only to get the yelling to stop. But even with that pressure, or maybe because of it, I could never muster the will to try. Easier to fail as a matter of course. I often battled depression and at times debilitating anxiety. In junior year of high school, I flirted with a dependence on benzos just to quell my fear enough to make it into the building. When I finally made it to college (to film school no less!) I flunked out after a year because I was too depressed to go to class. At the time, I always felt alone.
Why is that? Why is our experience of learning universally suffused with fear?
CRAM is the nightmare we’ve all had. It’s a movie about how it feels to be caught in the trap of higher education, a movie that unmasks the ugly face of academia underneath all that pomp and circumstance. Imagine – vampires who don’t need to hunt in secret, because we’ve been seduced into offering ourselves up to them willingly.
Like my favorite horror movies, CRAM takes a stab at these ideas while also aiming to make people laugh, scream, and cry. But it’s more than just a spooky story. By holding a light to our collective fears and traumas, horror movies exorcize real demons. Through our exposure and vulnerability on screen, people can come together in real life. I know this movie can offer that to audiences because it’s how it was made.
Making CRAM was the compassionate and collaborative education many of us never had. The best thing about making movies is they can’t be made alone, because movies can only be made by embracing people with different strengths and giving them the space to grow and find inspiration – the exact thing we felt was absent in our experience of higher education.
My belief is that CRAM can offer that feeling of solidarity to everyone who joins us on this journey. I can’t claim that this movie contains all the secrets needed to exorcize every academic demon, but I hope the audience leaves feeling provoked, and less alone.
CAST: John Dimino (Marc), Brandon E. Burton (The Master Of The Books), Rolando Chusan (The Machinist), Carolina Đỗ (Alice), Jane Bradley (Libra)
Writer | Director | Co-Editor | Executive Producer: Abie Sidell
Cinematographer | Executive Producer: Felix Handte
Co-Editor | Producer | 1st Assistant Director: Trevor Wallace
Producer: Zachry J. Bailey
Production Designer: Sydney Amanuel
Composer: Daniel Rudin
Sound Designer & Mixer: Daniela Hart
Costume Designer: Alexandra Nyman
Special Effects Makeup: Beatrice Sniper