Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

KILLFACE is a conceptual, sensory driven meditation on female strength, stamina, struggle and an invitation into a new perspective on female power. It's both a short documentary film intended for the screen, and an immersive video installation, utilizing 360 spatial audio. Filmed up close and wide, with no narration, no backstory, and very little dialogue, the project observes featherweight Muay Thai champion Natalie “Kill Face” Morgan’s ‘fight camp’ training. Privileging the sound of Morgan’s breath and keeping her centered in the frame, KILLFACE intentionally limits what we are able to see and hear, and invites audiences to experience an exhaustive and visceral exploration of getting strong and training for a fight. It also puts attention to how gendered violence echoes within the act of observing women engaged in combat, even when it's not present in the story. For the installation, KILLFACE explodes onto four walls, enveloping the audience. We’re so close that at times the camera loses Morgan. We go searching only to find fragmented images falling in and out of focus. Feet in motion, bodies punching, a jump rope slapping the mat. She’s fast, agile and evades the camera like she does her sparring partner. Sometimes our only glimpses of Morgan are wincing and clawing herself out from within a clinch hold. And sometimes our camera is so steady in its observation, she’s all we can see. The soundscape is programmed to travel across speakers set in a sphere. Audiences don’t listen to, they listen from within the experience.