Nostalgic Reflections: Showcasing My Questionable High School Movies

In this blog post, I will be archiving some old movies I made as school projects for my Literature class.

Usually in Literature class, we were assigned to write an essay discussing a specific topic covered in a given book. I must admit that, back then, I wasn't really into reading books. Thankfully, a couple of times our Literature teacher surprised us. Instead of writing reviews, some books we could cover by making short films. These films aimed to depict the areas of the book that we found most interesting or worthy of being filmed.

With limited time for planning and shooting, the challenge was to capture the essence of the stories and edit them into compelling films. Despite not having read the books, I embraced the opportunity to practice my filming and editing skills.

We were split into small groups of three to five people, and had a constraint of 90 minutes to plan and shoot the films. Afterwards, we had to edit the footage into a short film as homework. I was able to deliver projects that I am genuinely satisfied with. Fortunately, I managed to avoid the consequences of not reading the books by putting in the effort into producing and delivering films that I am genuinely satisfied with.

Below you’ll find three of such films I filmed during high school. I suggest wearing headphones for the best experience! 🎧

The beard symbolizes the metaphorical masks that people wear to conceal their true personality. Only by removing such amask can a person truly discover their authentic self and live a fulfilled life. This film, based on Janko Polić Kamov's novel "Brada" (eng. "Beard"), aims to explore the concept of self-discovery and the transformative power of embracing one's true identity.

(that last scene may have turned out a bit sketchy, but hey, we didn't have a lot of time to polish out every detail 😁)

This film, albeit loosely covers the theme of loss, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Lenore". The plot was slightly modified to depict the loss of a friend.

This film is inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment". It follows the story of a tormented protagonist who commits a crime and struggles with the psychological consequences of his actions. The film delves into themes of guilt, redemption, and the complexities of the human psyche.

If you enjoyed the school movies, you can also check out a shorter one I made more recently as a university project.