Smile
“Smile” is a wildly original and fantastical odyssey about four recently deceased souls who find themselves on an abandoned ship at sea. Part confessional, part elegy, the narrators must recount the circumstances which led to their untimely deaths, before a marauding gang of sting rays destroys their memories, banishing them to an eternity in purgatory. Created entirely from found internet footage, “Smile” offers the viewer a new and profound experience culled from the infinite digital world and turns it into a thought provoking, cinematic song of mourning and acceptance -
The glory of life and death.
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Boom, a 10-year-old swimmer endeavors to make sense of the loss of her father in a world of dragons, magical sea creatures and underwater superheroes, but will she be destined to repeat history? Albert, leather clad and speeding through a tunnel, flashes back to his life wandering the streets of Hong Kong in search of desire and connection, but with an increasing sense of unease and isolation, he must finally confess to a long-held and shameful secret. Rose, an ambitious sports agent is on the cusp of experiencing a career defining moment, when out of the blue, she takes a bold left turn - with horrific and unintended consequences. Devoted family man, Campbell, speaks only in third person as he reluctantly recalls a raging forest fire that would forever change his existence, leaving him stuck atop a thousand foot pole. Smile.
Synopsis
Robbie C. Williamson
Filmmaker
Going under the moniker Double Diamond Sun Body, Williamson produces large concepts. Starting with found material, he imposes his will and asks the material to live in a brighter universe. It’s a place where it has a chance to have new lease on life. His film and music work take off where people like Steve Reich and Andrei Tarkovsky only touched upon. The work has been featured at LACMA, MOCA, Sundance, Tokyo International Film Festival and International film festival Rotterdam to name a few. As a composer he has written scores ranging from WU Tang’s Wildness, premiering at the MoMo Documentary Fortnight, to Ryuhei Kitamura’s Midnight Meat train (starring Bradley Cooper)
that won the SCFI Jury award at Gérardmer film festival. Forbes online described Double Diamond Sun Body as “The personified astral projection of its creator’s interior world; a physically manifested concept."
For more on this work look here - doublediamondsunbody.com
Martin Byrial
Original score
Martin Byrial is a Danish composer best known for his work as singer, keyboardist and composer with the symphonic, experimental group LISERSTILLE, with whom he'd vanguard a Scandinavian post rock revival in the early 2000’s. The production of the score for Smile was supported by The Danish Arts Foundation and counts musicians from Odense Symphony Orchestra (DK), amongst whom were his sister Dorthe Byrialsen (viola). The score was further embellished by multiinstrumentalist shaman Klaus Löhrer, and 2nd solo violin player Gunvor Sihm of The Danish National Symphony (DRS) and the Nightingale Quartet.
Stephanie R. M. Smith
Producer
Stephanie Smith is a filmmaker and graduate of the American Film Institute’s MFA Directing program.
She wrote, directed and produced the documentary, “Cannes: The Agony and The Ecstasy, a behind-the-scenes
exposé on the insanity of the Cannes Film Festival, partly funded by BBC Scotland and distributed
worldwide by Target Entertainment. “Far on Foot”, her short drama about a troubled father-daughter
relationship starring Dolly Wells, screened at several international festivals and distributed by Hypnotic Films. Smith
began her film career as Head of Development at CAD Films, an off-shoot of the motion-picture publication
Moving Pictures, working alongside publishers and producers Mike Downey and John Campbell. She
developed a number of independent film projects with production companies in the UK, US and China,
including Film and Music Entertainment (FAME), Chris and Roberta Hanley’s Muse Productions and
Peter Loehr’s Ming Productions/CAA.