Asher Sinaiko
Asher Sinaiko is a fourth-year transfer filmmaker and production designer from the North Bay Area. He likes to cook and bake bread. Asher is primarily interested in narratives drawn from history, especially the early to mid 20th century and the early medieval period, with a focus on these periods in the context of Jewish and Assyrian history. He is interested in horror, religion, folklore, labor and agriculture, as well as the experience of war and genocide in working communities. His current project was inspired by helping his parents organize and sift through old family photos of his grandparents, great grandparents, Assyrian ancestors in Iran, and Jewish ancestors in Germany and Belarus before the Holocaust. It is a non-narrative film that is based primarily in sound design and imagery. The structure, look and the feeling of the film is inspired largely by family photographs and archival footage, as well as found-footage horror movies and the films Begotten by E. Elias Merhige and Funeral Parade of Roses by Toshio Matsumoto. The project includes imagery drawn from early Jewish texts, particularly The Book of Enoch and early translations of The Book of Daniel. The film itself is coming from dislocation, confusion and dysphoria. Asher hopes the viewer will have a physical reaction to the imagery.