Sylvia Toy St. Louis (Performance Art Video)
Sylvia Toy St. Louis
Performance Art Video
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Video
Cavemistress - Live Action Storyboard (2019)
Killer Jane (2017)
A Day In The Life Of a Soul (2018)
Sequence 13 (2017)
Runnn A****le 2011 (2011)
Outside In (2012)
Origins: The First Human/Experiment 1 (2012)
Psychotic Artifacts (2007)
The Self Made Trap (2018)
Denial, Monologue 3: The Dream (2012)
1) Dermalian
2) So The Goddess
3) The Labyrinth So The Goddess
4) Sylvia Toy St. Louis
DERMALIAN
Video
by Sylvia Toy: Dr Verne's Little Big Bang|English Subtitles
© 2025
Selected for Austin Arthouse Film Festival 2020
(nominated for Best Animation, Best Absurdist Film, Best Concept).
ARTIST'S STATEMENT.
Dr. Verne's Little Big Bang is based on a subplot of my feature screenplay,
DERMALIAN by Sylvia Toy, but deviates significantly from the screenplay.
Dr. Verne's Little Big Bang was created to generate interest in DERMALIAN,
for which I am raising funds to meet a $77K budget.
LOGLINE: "Aliens long after humans,
who having discovered the ruins of the New York Public Library & becoming enamored
of humans, establish the Ruins of the NYPL archaeological site & investigate
why humans became extinct."
I believe that humans' perversely unnatural dissociation from nature is the reason we
are killing the Earth. We do not live in symbiosis with nature & we do not live
empathetically with nature. This is what the Dermalians will learn in their study of human
extinction. Dermalian empathy, like musical talent, is a capacity with which one is born.
The highest level of empathy is 10. Below level 4 of empathy, a Dermalian is considered
handicapped and is protected by as strict protocols & laws as is Plasma.
I want humans to see ourselves through the Dermalians’ eyes.
This movie was "handmade" - shot digitally entirely in front of greenscreen, redscreen,
whitescreen, and other colors if necessary. My process involves several layers of
Chromakeying, sometimes including the actor’s skin. I key one element, such as the
screen, then another layer such as a costume or prop, etc. I do not like still images
behind my keyed clips and I have a large backdrop library of my own B-roll; clips
downloaded from NASA; stock footage downloaded from online service bureaus; and
other sources. As an example, the "Plasma" designs are based on clips of nerve cells
SO THE GODDESS
Video
DESCRIPTION. ”So the Goddess Can Always Find Her" is a proof of
concept, but it is also the first act of THE CAVE. THE CAVE is a movie
about a small group of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers facing dying out
because of its low birth rate and child mortality rate.
Lucy, a shamaness, is in her early 70s. In Paleolithic hunter-gatherer years,
she is ancient. Lucy has survived 20 children and 11 mates, one of whom
is an accidental homicide at the beginning of the movie. Lucy is itinerant,
usually alone but sometimes with a male partner if he lives long enough.
She has never mated for love, only for practicality and or duty. But her last
mate had also reached old age having survived numerous mates and all of
his children. The two of them have a lot in common with him and they have
rapport. But now they are holding vigil for his death.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT. My current major project THE CAVE is a movie
about a small group of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers facing dying out
because of its low birth rate and child mortality rate. THE CAVE is a
surrealistic experimental movie that explores the dark and the light of these
characters' world.
In my movie, DARKNESS is the known because one can either see
because there’s fire or not see because there is no fire. DARKNESS is the
exact opposite of what was sold to us by 20th century psychology as The
Unconscious. In this movie, DARKNESS is the only sure thing in life
because day or night, DARKNESS is the same. In contrast to this, LIGHT is
the unknown because what is seen and understood is slowly revealed
through accident, luck, risk-taking and inspiration
THE LABYRINTH
Video
THE LABYRINTH : Solastalgia by Sylvia Toy (2021)
DESCRIPTION. Silent, experimental performance art movie, with sound created from
recordings of breaking, ripping and shredding plastic. This film is a proof of concept for THE
LABYRINTH by Sylvia Toy, a mid-length film release d in July 2021.
LOGLINE . One, a woman driven to the point of psychosis by plastic pollution, escapes from
the known world into The Labyrinth, where she encounters a pure, perfect environment that is
nevertheless filled with invisible obstacles and threats, as well as supernatural creatures.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT. For 2 or 3 years in my early 20s, beginning after my closest friend
and running buddy got married and moved to Delaware, I frequently drove alone in the
countryside outside Lincoln, Nebraska. I experienced months-long episodes of bipolar
depression between ages 19-27. The driving was self-medication because the farther I drove
from evidence of humans other than road signs, the calmer I felt inside.
The farther I drove along the rolling country roads (that’s right, it’s not flat like tourists say it is),
the less extraneous I felt, the more I felt like I belonged in the world like everybody else. After a
few years of these periodic wanderings, the countryside was part of my own inner landscape, a
place that I could go for peace without going anywhere.
Flash forward to the 1990s when my in-laws bought a summer house in Cold Creek, Nevada
north of Las Vegas. By the 2000s, my husband and went to Nevada every summer. And after I
bought my first video cameras, I was out every morning before dawn waiting with my camera for
the elk to come back from the creek to return up the mountain for the day. It was a long wait –
about 4 years – before I finally saw elk in the morning. In the meantime, I explored the desert,
following ground-dwelling birds, rabbits, lizards. I was on foot, not able to go miles away from
the village like I could have done in my old Rambler. But in those days, I didn't have to go very
far to lose sight of the village and humans.
I wish I could remember the first time I had the sudden awareness of being surrounded by the
very loud sound of the desert, loud because of so many very busy living things. Loud because I
am the only human in sight and the desert doesn't care. Despite my camera, I am not a tourist
anymore. I am part of the landscape. Birds ignore me, but a few rabbits and elk stop what they
are doing to make eye contact.
I have watched Monte Hellman's and Jack Nicholson's movie, THE SHOOTING, close to 30
times. THE SHOOTING makes the desert seem a sinister place. It's fantastic, really, that a place
so barren and mostly void even of shadows could be sinister. That's not the way I feel about the
desert, but I am still fascinated with the movie. I think it's because like me in the country and the
desert, the characters become part of the landscape. They are not tourists.
SYLVIA TOY ST. LOUIS
I am a middle-class Black American housewife who makes Arthouse movies in my
livingroom. I develop script, character and production design using performance art and
Method Acting techniques. My movies are rehearsed and produced with continuity.
As a dramatist and filmmaker I have been most influenced by
Theatre of the Absurd, German Expressionism, the New Wave,
and filmmakers Dreyer, Cocteau, Bunuel and Rybczyński.
AWARDS.
• FICIMAD, Best Experimental Film, Featurette Movies (THE CAVE).
• Vesuvius International Film Awards, Best Smartphone Short (THE CAVE).
• Calcutta International Cult Film Festival, Experimental Films, Outstanding
Achievement Award (THE LABYRINTH).
• Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival, Special Mention (HALF LIVES).
• FICIMAD, Best Director in the Feature movies category (HALF LIVES).
• Luis Bunuel Memorial Awards, Honorary Awardee of the 2nd Pigeon D’or Awards
(HALF LIVES).
• Hazel Eye Experimental Film Festival,
• Best Experimental Animated Feature Film (CREATION).Five Continents
International Film
• Festival, Best Special Effects (CREATION).
• L.A. Neo Noir Novel, Film, & Script Online Festival, Femmes Fatales Grand Jury
Award (KILLER JANE).
• Arts Film Festival, Honorable Mention for Best Cinematography (BEFORE
CHILL
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