Jaina Cipriano V. 2
- Michael Hanna
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Jaina Cipriano is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, set designer, and actor whose work has been published over 200 times in notable publications such as The Boston Globe, The Phoblographer, Mister Magazine, and Lens Magazine. She has exhibited extensively in Massachusetts as well as participated in exhibitions nationally and internationally in Germany, Italy, and Greece. Recent exhibitions in Boston include Cambridge Art Association, The Station, Laconia Gallery, and 808 Gallery at Boston University. Jaina is also the director and owner of the Arlington Film Festival as well as the founder of Finding Bright Studios, a company specializing in artistic set design.
For the purpose of this article we will be focusing on Jaina’s films, since the last AFA essay discussed her photography. Jaina Cipriano’s films are not meant to be understood, but rather observed in the moment. The viewer will find lucid conversations which build up her various characters followed by mesmerizing visuals which induce a feeling as if slipping into a warm bath and then finding ourselves suddenly in ice cold water. Jaina’s sense of ‘shock and awe’ can be especially observed in her most recent projects such as the short series The Impostor Syndrome and Only Me on TV. These particular works express a notion of passing and lost time as we are eagerly transported from one scene or narrative to the next. Jaina’s fragmented and non-linear approach to filmmaking becomes further accentuated by the revealing of innocent, manic visuals and ingenious set design which invokes comfort as well as mystery and absurdity.
The slightly older film projects of Jaina Cipriano are Trauma Bond and You Don't Have to Take Orders From The Moon. Filled with strange characters and dialogue which invites intrigue as well as discomfort, Jaina introduces suspense in these particular works through strategic, hallucinogenic sequences which induce horror, euphoria, and thrilling sensations simultaneously. Jaina’s writing compliments her visuals in the filmwork as her characters display a sense of confidence as if they understand their own psychological impulses, desires, and fears. The intricate hand-made set design and props further compliment these mysterious figures through improper scaling, toy-like aesthetics, and pop-art-induced colors.
The Impostor Syndrome (pictured above), written by and starring Jaina Cipriano, takes us on a journey through various sequences of dialogue and visuals. Ranging from trying to find the right inspiration for writing a book on the ‘Raccoon Wars’ to a conversation of random facts about cacti to arguments with a muppet to a story-time dialogue about mythology and the false promises as well as fallacy of artificial intelligence, The Impostor Syndrome forces you to confront changes of conscious observation. In essence, the short film series could be described as revealing the mind of an artist with attention deficit disorder who feels lack of confidence towards her ability to express herself, even though she is quite skillful in reality, hence the title. The disjointed narrative and dialogue structure as well as the child-like set design reveals an imaginative world full of acceptance of abnormality and raw creativity.
Jaina Cipriano as an artist imbues her films with an integrative approach of clever dialogue revealing characters attuned with their subconscious, hand-crafted set design visuals which stun, mystify, haunt, as well as entertain combined with acting which can be described as mindfully intriguing. Her films often have a hypnotic effect, only to break the numbing experience through a jolt of mesmerizing visuals and sustained audio which shatter the viewer’s notion of comfort, familiarity, and solace. With witty scriptwriting steeped in dialogue full of mindfulness, a range of manic visuals as well as a fragmented, non-linear structure, Jaina Cipriano remains one of the very most promising young artists of our generation who no doubt has endless capacity to provide her audience with flavorful art which highly stimulates our imagination.
