B Alex Smith

Swallows Light B Alex Smith

A Tarkovskian science fiction fable, SWALLOWS LIGHT is set in the not too distant future and tells the story of Esther, a new mother in her early thirties, and the lives of those with whom her own intertwines along the quietly fractured landscape of a democracy gone wrong, whose government has banned all forms of mass communication except newspapers, radio, and mail. Written near the end of the Bush II administration, and inspired by the "chamber" films of Ingmar Bergman, the early music of Neil Young and the frightening resiliency of The Patriot Act, SWALLOWS LIGHT tells the broad story of a dystopian society (whose governing body maintains control over the individuals in its population by forcing them into isolation from each other by, literally, cutting off their means of communication with each other) through the eyes of a young woman in a loveless marriage whose search for meaningful human connection opens her eyes to the nature of individuals living under such emotional martial law, places her in close proximity to reactionaries on both sides of the argument over how to go on living in a country governed in such a manner and, ultimately, determines her fate.