River Ouellette to Create Mini Documentaries Headed to YouTube
ESOCRYPT OBSERVER WEB UPDATE
Gigi Morrison
1/13/20243 min read
Documentarian River V.C.’s first work, Love, Will, and Wisdom, garnered over 20,000 views since its release in May of 2022. However, its success was beyond what was projected for the project, as it was made as a gift to the New Hampshire-based Temple of Witchcraft. Though it does have elusive promotional material from the (mostly online) national tour of the film, which includes around 45 minutes of content, which was only viewable at screenings that requested it or presented an award to the film.
It seems as if we will have to wait for that though, as ESOCRYPT has greenlit a series directed by River, the self-titled River V.C.'s Mini-Docs. When asked about the announcement River said “I loved the process of making Love, Will, and Wisdom, and after seeing a call for legitimization of the video essay genre from HBomberguy, I was excited to put my take on what video essays could be ….” River continues:
“... I want to give you a shorter documentary that as I'm sitting there reading it we can both say look at this, this person was important, either because of their influence, or time period, or pain they went through, and I'm glad I know about them now…”. The first episode is based around “Noble” Mark Johnson, A black silent film era star who made considerable strides in his time before having almost all of his work lost due to racism and being a threat to the business model for the film production companies at the time.
“The episode’s scripts were edited and supervised by yours truly, Ms. Gigi Morrison. We decided to have a three-person crew of River, myself, and Royin Yap. River would write the episode and send it over for us to edit. When I asked River about the process they said: “It was good. I felt like more or less you were fact-checking me and making sure we didn't make any egregious errors. You let me shit-talk D.W. Griffith pretty hard and kept it in from the first draft so I definitely felt the creative freedom...”
The six-episode series will be released incrementally, each episode will focus on a different figure in early film history. “Noble Johnson was the first, he came to mind after I watched The Mummy(1932) and saw him playing The Nubian, and I just thought, F— man, that guy just took over the whole screen. He opened the door for the mummy at one point and it even looked like Karloff was a fraction of the power of this one random dude. I think it was the look… He just had this stare. There had to be more to this guy.”
The series has been greenlit for one season, though River has already been contemplating the next. “I only agreed to one because I honestly didn't want to take up too much time and resources. I already have a feature-length out, and there are probably a lot of homies in the back waiting for the studio to swing their way so they can make something good. Of course, I'll do a second season, but I'm happy right now with my experimental shit. It's not as popular but it's been fun, I've done a lot with 16-millimeter film. I like my films, they screen well”. River’s personal art films are not part of an ESOCRYPT collection but can be viewed on their YouTube channel (@LongbodyofwaterYT) or their website at Longbodyofwater.com. Local screenings of River’s work also happen periodically in the Massachusetts area.
River V.C.’s Mini-Docs (Episodes 1-6) will be available for free on the @ESOCRYPT official YouTube Channel. ESOCRYPT Official will announce the schedule and more information closer to the debut.
