Long Beach is a short film about three old friends, who respond to the sudden death of a high school classmate by taking individual journeys to deal with their acute grief. Long Beach explores the strength of these bonds, and how the passing of a friend in the midst of youth will always be an event no one truly knows how to handle.
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Long Beach is about an idea that heaven is an unpredictable but beautiful place, and how the world of the living is a place so far away. The film explores the fragility of life and the struggle that exists between departures.
CAST:
Cayla Berejikian is a Brooklyn-based actress and teaching artist. She graduated from New York University where she studied psychology, theater, and film production. During her studies, she trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Recently, she has enjoyed acting in a variety independent projects and sharing her passion for the creative process with her students.
Nicholas Leeson Spann is a Trinidadian American actor and artist born in Brooklyn, NY. He has spent half his life overseas and moved back to the U.S. as a teenager. Nicholas is dabbling in multiple forms of artistry and expressing himself in his own way on his journey.
Benjamin Wilson is a multi-media artist currently based on the East Coast. In 2021 he graduated from The Mason Gross school of the Arts at Rutgers university where he earned a BFA in visual arts. Wilson has worked in a variety of mediums including painting and video as well as dabbling in acting, music, and performance art. In the past year he has worked as a scenic artist on the WSJ innovator awards at MOMA and is about to release a collection of poems and photographs entitled “Highway Hypnosis”, based around themes of travel and American identity.
CREW:
Assistant Director: Finley King
Director of Photography: Ryan Quon is a filmmaker and director of photography working in the greater New York City Area. His previous collaboration with Xu, In Passing (short film), has developed a shared visual language — translating poem and portrait to the screen. Section of Long Beach are set to be filmed in and around Ryan’s hometown of coastal New Jersey.
Art Producer: Johanna Cordasco
Gaffer: Jack Mannion is a filmmaker whose work has taken home awards from the likes of the All American High School Film Festival and the Indie Street Film Festival. He is a graduate of Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University with a BFA in Digital Filmmaking.
Line Producer: Madeline Benfield is a graphic designer, producer, and artist living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work mainly revolves around archives, music, and film, and she currently designs at Fools Gold Records. She loves the Oxford Comma.
CONTACT:
Communication for Long Beach can be reached by contacting the director, Haolun Xu: haolun2@example.com.
REFERENCE BOARD:
Long Beach will be taking after the visual styles of Wim Wender’s film Paris, Texas (1984), Sogo Ishii’s Mirrored Mind (2005), and drawing influence from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975). The use of open-space imagery will capture both the New Jersey landscape to create a melancholy but vibrant texture.
Haolun Xu 