What Became of Clarence Black

LOGLINE

Strange events grip an apartment building after a resident discovers a videotape he believes shows his future life. 

TEAM BIOs

Stephen Spoth is a Buffalo-based writer, creator, and musician. A graduate of NYU, he served as university president of the national cinema society Delta Kappa Alpha while interning under such industry luminaries as Jake Gyllenhaal, Riva Marker, and Darren Aronofsky. He has written numerous feature films spanning a wide range of genres, with his artificial intelligence thriller Nina landing prominent placements in several screenplay competitions, including as a finalist for the WeScreenplay Feature Contest. At Nine Stories Productions, he was the first reader and early champion of the horror script Relic, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. During the pandemic, he turned his sights to music, pursuing an expansive cross-genre creative vision under the stage name Dakota Wilde. Last year, he set out to write a trio of short films grappling with questions of modern loneliness, our relationship with technology, and fate vs. free will, with “What Became of Clarence Black” as the first in the triptych.

Shubhangi Shekhar is a multi-hyphenate creator hailing from the mid-western suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, and an undergraduate from New York University. She has development, digital production, directing, writing, marketing, and journalism experience from award-winning and critically acclaimed global media companies such as A24, Verizon Media, Roy Kapur Films, Condé Nast Entertainment, and Patreon. She was also part of the inaugural class of The Salon Mentorship Program for up-and-coming South Asian talent in the directing track, under the mentorship of TV director Anu Valia. She has also received The New York City Women in Film (Pano) microgrant as a producer, and the Brown Girl Magazine x The Cosmos Care Fund microgrant as a writer and director for her projects. She is currently a WIF Creative Documentary Producing Fellow. Along with producing, directing, and developing a handful of independent projects, she also supports and mentors up-and-coming South Asian writers as one of the writer's room leads with the Rickshaw Film Foundation. And when no one's watching, she expresses herself through her poetry. Her artistic voice is fundamentally rooted in the cross-section between Western and South Asian cinema, and she aims to tell unique stories that gauge mass audiences across language, cultural, and gender barriers.

Idil Eryurekli is a Turkish-born cinematographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She focuses on any and all forms of compelling visual storytelling: narratives, documentaries, and branded. Her approach is to create images that are story-driven, emotional, and nuanced. Her narrative work has premiered at Tribeca, Cannes, SXSW, Telluride, and Palm Springs ShortFest among others. Her commercial clients include Vogue, Victoria’s Secret, Condé Nast, Lexus, and Tommy Hilfiger. Being a queer immigrant herself, Idil aims to amplify multi-national stories and marginalized characters by showing them outside of their molds and in unconventional structures. Idil is a 24’-25’ ASC Vision Mentee and a member of the ICF+C.