fEVER
2025
David Stout
fEVER is a moving image song cycle that sees the extended US-Mexican borderlands through the eyes of an immortal who does not recognize the existence of a border but rather a living breathing numinous world, home to an intercultural trade route that has existed for millennia. Within this framing, the film unfolds as a series of songs or postindustrial folktales ruminating on immigration, social inflammation, urban madness, and visionary illumination. Blending aspects of experimental film, music-video, and mythopoetic storytelling, the work has been described as an operatic animated graphic novel. The fluid genre defying aesthetic blends multiple, cultural, historic, and sonic / visual-media references made possible through the director’s ongoing exploration of generative AI as a far-reaching film-making toolset. fEVER is presented here as a traditional linear film; however, the work is also performed live as a duo including a cellist and a live cinema performer playing electro-acoustic sound and percussion triggered animation sequences.
