Our Picks: LOVESTREAMS by Sean Buckelew
An ode to a lost age of Internet love.
LOVESTREAMS is a confessionary tale of two strangers in an online chat room one lonely night in 2002; a love story from the early days of the Internet. Passing through a mysterious portal and arriving at a ballroom masquerade of morphing avatars where they can be whoever they choose, the net-cross’d lovers get to spend one magical night together before the real world comes crashing back in.
Directors Notes
LOVESTREAMS was initially conceptualized as part of the Late Night Work Club anthology of animated films centered around the theme “Strangers” (also the home to the viral hit “Hi Stranger” by Kirsten Lepore). Painstakingly recreating and hand-animating the interfaces of a bygone tech era, the film aims to perfectly capture the visceral emotional quality of chatting online and falling in love. It was born from an interest in the identity politics of the early Internet, with a nostalgic longing for a time when people were playful and mysterious with how they presented themselves online. In this nascent state of Internet interactions, these kinds of relationships were both intensely honest and emotional, but also disconnected and difficult to reconcile with the real world, in spite of their ubiquity. The film attempts to shine a light on how special these relationships were, and how unique their position in technological history. LOVESTREAMS was produced completely independently and was animated over the course of two years, sandwiched between commercial projects. The online release coincides with the 20th anniversary of the release of AOL Instant Messenger, the chat application that inspired the film. It has screened internationally at festivals and packed houses for specially curated Late Night Work Club events.
