“Liquid Soul” is an Electric Short Film and Photo Exhibit by Texas’ Own Archfern

On November 10th at Cafe Brasil, the Houston Cinema Arts Festival played a set of short films for the Texas Filmmaker’s Showcase. Included in the collection was a psychedelic gem named Liquid Soul. The film was directed by Allen Phillips and Trampas Smith of the Archfilm company and filming it was no easy task.

“You have zero dollars, zero professionals, and half of it was shot with an iPhone.” –Allen Phillips

A young man goes on a revenge mission to harm the girl who broke his heart. Sound familiar? It’s not. You’ve never seen anything like this. Liquid Soul is 12:39 minutes of electric filmmaking. We follow the narrative of a solid, soulful voice over as he spirals into madness stemmed from huffing gasoline. The electric colors, slick visual edits, impressive sound edits, and cinematography are stunning.

Although the film has been shown in thirteen festivals across the country including the Fayetteville Film Festival and  Fantastic Fest in Austin it was banned from being screened in its hometown of Texarkana, well, at least the nearest bigger town to the actual hometown of De Kalb. Texas.

“The museum wouldn’t allow the film to be shown , we originally wanted to do something very different with the photographs. Originally we only wanted to print images from the walking scene to highlight the regional landscapes in the film, as this area is incredibly beautiful. We intended to project the film to give the photos context. That’s why we chose to print the entire film.” – Allen Phillips

Undeterred by the ban, the filmmakers created a new way to present their story. They created a photo out of still shots from the film. This photograph is 118′ long, and 4′ tall. It is believed to be the largest photograph in Texas, and you know what they say about Texas…

“What we do is we move the viewer around the story, as opposed to moving the story for the viewer. You’re still watching the film. You’re coming here to watch a film; you’re just experiencing it in a different way,” Phillips said. “It’s such a simple thing.” – Allen Phillips

In this astounding Matterport tour you can walk through the entire exhibit.

The film has been submitted to more festivals and will soon be available online. For more information and to follow the path of this compelling film check out Archfern on Facebook.