An MFA Thesis Film by Madison May Wilson Barton
ANATOMY OF A REGIME
History dares to repeat.
Love dares to challenge.
THE STORY
In 2026 Los Angeles, Kate Reed encounters The Secret History, a sixth-century account of the corruption of the court of Emperor Justinian. What starts as a study session quickly becomes something else: Kate begins to experience visions of a past life in sixth-century Constantinople, where she lived as Kale (KAH-leh).
In 544 Constantinople, Kale is trying to protect the life she's built with Helena, the Persian woman she loves. But when their home is threatened by the Emperor's militiamen, the Blues, Kale must confront an impossible choice: remain in the home and life she knows, or leave to protect the woman she loves.
Meanwhile, in 2026, Kate reels from the flashes of the past as ICE pull up to her home to take away her girlfriend, Lena, as Lena begs to leave the US for safer shores.
Centuries apart, Kate and Kale find themselves asking the same questions. What will I risk to protect the people I love? Where is "safe" anymore? What happens when I refuse to stay silent?
ANATOMY OF A REGIME is a short film about love, compromise, and survival in a world full of threats, and the price of deciding where we stand.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
"Prokopios felt he had been living in a nightmare for most of his adult life." This is the opening to the translator's introduction of The Secret History. I was seventeen years old on Election Day in 2016, unable to vote and unable to look away. As the electoral map bled red, I sobbed into my mother's lap, watching my world fill with doubt, fear, panic, and utter hopelessness. My nightmare had begun, and like many others, I have not stopped wondering, will it ever stop?
Prokopios's work horrified me and inspired me when I first read it. How is it possible that he could know what deeds the corrupt ruler of today would commit as he wrote of his own?
My film draws from Prokopios's prophetic work to create a world within a world, one not at all unlike our own, where we are forced to ask even the most fundamental questions: Is life precious? Should we help others? Can dissent be allowed? What must we risk to protect those we love?
This film is a something of a historical thriller, but it is also a love story. Two women whose love connects them across generations. In every lifetime, they find each other. It is also a love story between myself and the journey I've been on for ten years now, falling into the realm of period pieces in film and television, to studying the history behind them, to creating them myself.
Visually, my team and I explore a dream-like state in the sixth-century timeline, leaning on the structure and use of light in many Baroque paintings, while using exclusively candlelight in these scenes. These golden halos of light, surrounded by smothering darkness, provide a beautiful allegory for the emotional experience of Kate, Kale, and even myself.
For all its darkness, ANATOMY OF A REGIME is ultimately a story about love: the lives we build around it, the risks we take for it, and the choices it demands of us. In a world that would make fear the organizing principle of our lives, to love someone fully is to insist upon a future that power cannot guarantee and cannot wholly control. I hope this film leaves its audience asking not only what they would risk to protect the people they love, but what kind of world they are willing to help create for them.
THE FUNDRAISING IMPACT
We are looking to raise $2,400 to bring this story into being.
Every contribution helps us transform a black-box studio into homes that are centuries apart.
BUILD THE WORLD
Contributions will help create the modern and Byzantine homes through furniture, props, costumes, lights, and camera accessories.
BRING THE STORY TO LIFE
A film can't be made without people. Help cover the practical needs of production, from feeding the cast and crew to transportation and parking.
FINISH THE FILM
Support post-production, including sound, color, and the finishing work that ties it all together.
SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD
Help us prepare the film for screenings and festival submissions so it can reach audiences beyond our university.