One woman's descent into the corporate inferno.

Joe Bob Briggs calls this award-winning short "the mother of all art films." An angst-filled temporary worker plunges into a symbolic labyrinth of mythological mayhem. In black and white and Esperanto with subtitles in English this avante gardesque film explores the existential dilemma as it lampoons the corporate culture of San Francisco's financial district. Ne Plu Pikniko won Best Satire Short at the NYIIFV Festival 2008 and is on to Cannes 2009. It also won second prize at The San Francisco Poetry Film Festival where it was called "redolent of Euripides." Also a second prize winner at the Rutgers Mixed Media Festival, reviewers noted it was "like Woody Allen interpreting Sartre" and "the film that got the greatest audience response."

Apart from creating a gritty ambiguously foreign underground look, I wanted to use the three streams of Esperanto language, the English subtitles and the surrealistic imagery to complement and contradict the metaphors of alienation. Esperanto was invented in 1877 and popularized in the 60's. Its intention was to overcomelanguage barriers to foster real understanding between all peoples on earth. While there are a few Native speakers--those born into an Esperanto-speaking family, in general, the Esperanto speaker does not carry with him or her a cultural identity, homeland, or history. He or she is always alien. Yet at the same time the language offers itself as a bridge between all other cultures and homelands. This was part of what inspired my decision to use Esperanto in the film, aside from its natural beauty and simplicity.