CREATOR’S STATEMENT

In the process of applying to and appearing in film festivals, we were asked several times to provide a creator’s statement to accompany our project and marketing materials. The following was written in early 2022 by series creator, Will Jacobs, and is posted here to appease the demands of his tyrannical ego.

OLYMPUS came from a personal need to make something. To speak candidly, I was a little confused and unhappy and I promised myself that I’d see a creative project fully through and, in so doing, hopefully cultivate a sense of deeper meaning in my personal life. What came out was much stranger than I had anticipated, having set out to make a silly parody web-series and winding up with a kind of genre-bending meta mini-series about abstraction and memory and love.

It isn’t important. It’s not revolutionary or paradigm-shifting or socially hyper-conscious and I don’t mean that flippantly or defiantly as much as I do as a small apology. I think art as an engine for social-change is very real; I believe narratives and visibility are integral components of a culture’s moral fiber, and while OLYMPUS: A RETROSPECTIVE falls short of that kind of importance, it is, in a very literal sense, about that exact mechanism—the basic human need to order information into stories with satisfying components: clarity, meaning, cause, conflict, resolution, moral—and, in so doing, bring real meaning to our lives.

I do believe, as Jackie alludes to as he stands trial, that we are at increasing odds with our own existence, and the era of mass media has given us a poor tool for dealing with that existential angst. To act against this, we don’t simply need better stories; we need to step back a moment and examine our need for stories, to enter into a less defined space which, in spite of its novelty and asymmetry is no less comfortable and inviting.

But, honestly, more than any of that I wanted it to be funny; I wanted it to communicate a maximum amount of joy in as few images and sounds as possible. Olympus is a product of a community of artists sharing in this exact form of joy, and if the series has any value, it’s that we were able to capture some of that silliness, that spirit. I mean, I’m really not a very serious person. I had my friend Dan dress up as Jesus and pretend to crucify me in the woods...so, I guess just take all of this with a grain of salt. After all, maybe more than anything Olympus is about how it’s better to just live. Let all those big ideas you used to have give way to the really good stuff that makes up a life.

Thank you for reading,

Will Jacobs