Cecilia Stenbom examines individual methods and coping mechanisms used to navigate safely and comfortably through everyday life. Reinterpreting scenarios within entertainment, mass media, retail, and domestic life, she explores human response to a consumer driven and information rich culture.
SYSTEM is a film about anxieties, irrational behaviour and the quest for control in a non-domestic space. Set entirely inside a shopping centre, it follows the interactions between two sisters; one anxious about her personal safety, the other concerned with the invisible threat of infection. The sterile atmosphere quickly becomes menacing, as the women’s personal safety systems begin to fail.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT explores the unwritten rules of social interaction that control our behaviour. The film shows three scenarios in which a person fails to conform, either through choice or by misunderstanding. The first vignette explores the excruciating return to an outgrown family unit during a birthday celebration. The second story, based on a casual get-together for people interested in BDSM role-play, investigates the careful negotiation necessary to integrate with a new social context. The final vignette is set in a professional context, where the outsider is trying, and failing, to blend in with ultra-conservative colleagues.

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