Repressed Family Trauma rears its ugly head in Tracy Mathewson & Kate Winter’s Psychedelic and Psychological Drama ORTOLAN (Directors Notes)
Set in a divinely crowded and lush old house, ORTOLAN, written, produced and performed by Kate Winter is inspired by her own experiences with repressed memories. Winter joined forces with director Tracy Mathewson to bring to life a powerfully vivid film where every minute detail has a role to play. A heightened situation in which it appears as if the world within is pulsating with energy as the acerbic and biting writing pits each sisters’ own memories against each other. The night descends into madness as does the frenetic camerawork and gleefully funny moments of self-realisation and absurdity. An impressive proof of concept short created to pave the way for the feature which is waiting in the wings. As ORTOLAN completes its festival circuit we sat down with Mathewson and Winter to talk about their creative partnership, how they brought about such arresting shots in low light interiors and accurately representing a psychedelic trip.
International Screenwriting Conference in Columbia, Missouri (Missouri Film Office)
“Dr. Tracy Mathewson, a conference attendee who gave a crowd favorite presentation on Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, had this to say about the conference theme, ‘From an academic perspective, it was so valuable hearing male colleagues speak about women screenwriters and practitioners with a depth and appreciation [for the female gaze] which is often reserved for male practitioners.’ ”
Screenwriters and academics converge on Stephens College for international conference (Columbia Daily Tribune)
“The presenters, including some of the screenwriting academics, interest Tracy Mathewson an independent filmmaker, writer and director based in London. She's also a screenwriting teacher. Her Friday presentation is ‘Barbie: The Queer-Coded Conspiracy Protagonist We Needed and Never Saw Coming.’ “
Barking, biting, hatching: The hyperreal sound design of ORTOLAN (Radical Art Review)
“Three cups of tea, three sisters, and one haunted family home comprise the drama of this equally horrifying and hilarious psychedelic nightmare-trip. Painted in deep reds and blacks and Gothic chiaroscuro, this visually stunning short is incomplete without its ambitious and inventive use of sound. The boldly abstract and yet carefully fine-tuned soundscape constitutes an integral part of ORTOLAN’s world-building and character psychology, and is one of Kate and Tracy’s proudest achievements with the film.” Ebba Wester of Radical Art Review sits down with the film’s sonic masterminds Joe Murgatroyd, Janis Balodis, and Izaak Buffin to talk about their work on the film’s hyperreal approach to sound, from the unsettling score to the poetic and conceptual sound design.
Conversation With Tracy Mathewson, Director of ORTOLAN, and Kate Winter, Writer, Producer & Actor
“The 24 minute short takes place in a luxuriously grand house oozing with history as we see the sisters, after their mother’s wake, acerbically fight over their family estate. The short is a sheer delight, traversing the tight-rope from comedy to drama and peppered with surprisingly pleasing moments of horror. It will entice you in, play havoc with your senses and chew you out…leaving you wanting more.”
Tracy Mathewson on Art of Talking Podcast
Streaming from the VISTA Academy in El Monte, California, hosts Angel, Max and Dee interview director/writer/award-winner Tracy Mathewson from across the pond to talk about her film experience, her background in everything but film, and the irrelevance of talent.
ORTOLAN Review (4 stars, Filmhounds)
“An impressive display of atmosphere and tension… an accomplished film with an unnerving and spooky mood”
First Trailer Released for Short Film “ORTOLAN” (Filmhounds)
“It’s eery, absurd, sometimes funny, and also a little bit scary… written/starring/produced by Kate Winter after her own jarring experience with buried memory with the script edited and directed by Tracy Mathewson.”
A Beginner’s Guide to Film Genres (Film Distributors’ Association")
On this course, you’ll learn from educators with expertise in film theory who can help you gain theoretical and practical insights into genre filmmaking. Dr Tracy Mathewson will be covering the Thriller genre for this massive open online course.
“Hauntological screenwriting: Reflections on writing Render”
Journal of Screenwriting (Volume 13, Number 1)
A hauntological reflection on the theoretical and practical approaches to developing Render, a feature-length conspiracy screenplay written to discern whether and how it is possible to present viable justice in a conspiracy film amidst a twenty-first-century technological and conspiracy culture. Alongside the introduction of new narrative techniques such as ‘corruption of the protagonist’, ‘emergence of the inner voice’, ‘many-headed monster’, and genre-appropriate classifications such as the ‘seen/unseen threat’ and surveillance capitalism as the logic behind the conspiracy genre’s new behemoth ‘Big Technology’, this article blends academic analysis with personal reflection to involve the reader in the liminal space between theory and practice, the tension between objective and subjective and the intuitive and at times designless process that perpetuates each subsequent draft of a feature screenplay. Here, the application of hauntology as a lens through which to view the screenwriting process is explored to characterize the ebb and flow between that which is no longer (the previous draft) and that which is still not yet (the next draft).
5x5 Interview with Creative Mentorship Community GoodBadMad
“California” at the 9th European Conference of Arts & Humanities
Visual Essay: “Truth, Justice… and Protect Yourself”
A visual representation of the opening chapter from my doctoral thesis: “Post-Truth, Justice, and the Feminine Way: An examination of justice and female agency in mainstream American conspiracy films from the 1970s to present”
Visual Essay: “Truth, Justice, and Her Feminine Wiles”
Presented at Embracing Change (University of York Dept of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media - Postgraduate Virtual Symposium 2021): A visual representation of the second chapter of my doctoral thesis which investigates the effect of female agency on justice in American conspiracy films from 1971- present.
Visual Essay: “Weapons of Mass Disruption”
Presented at Global Concerns in Storytelling (University of York Dept of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media - Postgraduate Virtual Symposium 2020); a visual representation of the final chapter of my doctoral thesis discusses how to address the weakening political force of conspiracy narratives.
“The Privatisation of Justice in American Conspiracy Film”
Film International (2019, volume 17, issue 1)
For a genre dedicated to calling out abuse of power and protecting the interests of the public, the transformation of traditional conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s to the privatised narratives of the late 1980s/1990s comes not as a surprise, but at a cost in the political force of modern conspiracy thrillers. In the course of 50 years, the nature of justice in these films has been recast in the reflections of their corresponding cultural landscapes, which I trace in three phases: first, overtly political, with great value attributed to notions of truth, justice and morality; then, deeply personal, with sanctity of the family, protecting one’s livelihood, or reaching self-discovery taking priority over the public good. In the years following 9/11, when political abuses of power re-entered the public consciousness, conspiracy films attempted to return to their politically forceful roots but have yet to reconcile twenty years of solipsistic, greed-fuelled narratives with the growing cynicism of the public towards conspiracy films’ iconic pillars of justice: the media and the law.
About the journal:
Film International started in 1973 as Filmhäftet in Sweden and has through the years recruited contributors among the most distinguished scholars and journalists around the world. The journal refuses the facile dichotomies of ‘high’ and ‘low’, Hollywood and independent, art and commercial cinema, discussing Hollywood films seriously, and ‘art’ movies critically.
OAXACA FILM FESTIVAL - endorsement for APPELLATION, September 2017
“Mathewson projects a thought-provoking dystopia and raises poignant questions about our current relationship with the environment in this accomplished short”
