Watch: Phillip Van: And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost

And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost by Phillip Van is one part of a five-part exquisite corpseproject launched by Little Minx partnered with RSA Films. In addition to Van, four other directors—Chris Nelson, Malik Hassan Sayeed, Josh Miller, and Laurent Briet—responded to the last line of text of the previous director’s script.

From an interview posted on Shorts, Van is asked: The emotional wallop of “She Stares” gets a huge assist from the music—the song ‘Come Wander With Me’, which is from an episode of The Twilight Zone. The song is built so perfectly into the film—was the song a starting point for the film, or something that you discovered later?

PV: The song was very much a starting point for the narrative. The narrative ideas and characters complement yet also contrast and reconfigure the lyrics.

I first found the song, sung by Bonnie Beecher in an original Episode of the Twilight Zone and I was so taken by it that I couldn’t think of much else for a while. When this project arose, I felt the elements that the guidelines required I incorporate would work well with the images and narrative the song had conjured in my mind.