FILM
BY
WARDROP
AND
OUNANIAN
FILM
BY
WARDROP
AND
OUNANIAN
In LA, a young man is looking for ways not to be sad. A perpetually between-work videographer, he has left the city and is searching for jobs in the desert suburbs. He has been told he can make money his own way, but with each person he meets this seems less and less likely. Tomorrow, he laments, he must go and spy on his landlord’s ex-wife.
In LA, a young woman is helping others not to be sad. A professional live-streamer, she has moved into a concrete box and lives a reality built only from the stories that people send her. She is paid to perform other people’s pain, but not sure what to do with her own. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will leave her box and eat a steak.
More about the Movie
La Tijera is the first feature-length film by writer-directors Steven Ounanian and Jo Wardrop. It is also a street in Los Angeles. The film is loosely based on a series of dubious and temporary jobs they’ve had, and the time they lived above a furniture warehouse in LA.
La Tijera, aims to capture a particular type of alienation produced by the temporary labour market and gig economy, where the screen plays an increasingly important role in every aspect of life. The screen is a source of income. The screen is a friend. The screen is a connection to a distended reality, bloated and full of shit. But unfortunately, the screen is also beautiful.
The characters in La Tijera live in their own individual genres, they don’t seem to have any shared sense of space and time. These fractured identities are brought together as a way of investigating the disorienting and ultimately disappointing quality of ‘phone-life’.
LA TIJERA COPYRIGHT © MMXIX WARDROP AND OUNANIAN
