简介：Nominally a laptop movie in that the computer screen is the film’s frame, Debut deploys the genre’s usual formal elements—browser windows, Google Earth images, stuttering .mov clips—while adding a profusion of other material, from 3D animation to iPhone-shot location footage to dolls and miniature work.
As for the counterfeit art narrative, that’s inspired by the real-life case of New York dealer Ely Sakhai, who was charged by the FBI with selling forged impressionist paintings. After reading the original FBI documents, Castronovo became fascinated with one aspect of the fraud—that, based on the brush strokes, the actual forger was speculated to be a young Chinese person. “I was interested in that link between this type of aesthetic creation that occurs somewhat in a vacuum but then, when it’s interpreted in this real context, takes on these racial or cultural qualities. So, I invented a fiction from that.”
