BOOK OF SKIN

Neil Kendricks is a San Diego-based artist, writer, filmmaker and educator. Kendricks and composer Mike Mare collaborated on the interdisciplinary art exhibition “Temple of Story” at the Oceanside Museum of Art from October 2021 to February 2022. The artist’s short films and storyboards were shown in the “Mirror, Mirror: Lights, Camera, Dreams!” exhibition at the Bread and Salt gallery in 2021. Kendricks’ award-winning short films have screened at numerous international film festivals, and his new short film “Book of Skin” is connecting with audiences on the film-festival circuit. You can learn more about Kendricks and Mare's creative projects at https://www.thebabelhouse.com/.

What makes my short film “Book of Skin” unique is all of the film’s artists/actors created real drawings on camera in order to capture a documentary realism within a fictional narrative. As a professional artist, writer, filmmaker and educator, I was committed to filming something that I have never seen before in a fictional film about artists and the creative process: Experienced visual artists creating drawings in real time while performing in a surreal story. The film’s casting process took years to find the right visual artists who could create high-quality drawings while simultaneously portraying fictional, unnamed characters.

My screenplay for “Book of Skin” was inspired by my years of teaching drawing at various colleges and universities, and bearing witness to the mysterious process and discovery of artists thinking on paper. I believe that I achieved my intent in this short film with its life-drawing session's turn for the uncanny.