Ph03nix Rising: The 3rd Son

‘Ph03nix Rising: The Third Son’ is a short film and coming of age story. A textured synthesis of sci-fi, biblical and noir. Here late 20th century globalism contends with traditional West African legacies.The sourcing of materials from mass entertainment belies the complexities of what it is to function and develop in cognitive and cultural hinterlands. WWE wrestlers portray archetypes of masculinity, valour and cunning; Kung fu movies where dissonant dubbing presses against the edges of the fourth wall; 16 and 32bit graphics in their simplicity represent emotional intensities of landscapes and dreamscapes. Combined they represent the contracting and dissolving peripheries of childhood, puberty and adolescence.If the body is the site of trauma, it is also an archive. The words from Ohema are a lullaby steeping her children with the expectations of generations. If these games and sagas are versions of reality intertwined with our own, is original sin embedded as code? Are we to consider this trauma passed down and repeated like cmd+A, cmd+C, cmd+X, cmd+V as the Sisyphean “cheat” pattern of gamer in trance? Here Achiampong’s Ph03nix makes peace by processing fraternal turmoil into fortitude.