Manakin (2025)

Manakin is an experimental short that follows the story of a single woman living in a desolate house accompanied by a life-like stuffed doll. A creation of her own design, the manakin projects videos of single men reciting words of lust, absurd confessions and the desire for human connection. While these audio-visual projections keep her company in her isolation, our subject begins to weave her own web crafted by the same material as the doll, growing as an entity outside this house. Directed by Kasey Oldford, Manakin uses found audio prompts from the dating app Hinge, spliced and put back together to create a nerve wracking video love poem that touches on the obscene and lonely reality of the modern quest for love.