“I think at the centre of all my work is that freedom that we find in the self, in the aloneness that we occupy as humans,” Andrea Dorfman told The Coast earlier this year, when discussing her new un-romantic comedy, Spinster. Hers has been a busy 2020, discussing the Chelsea Peretti film through its release. But, leave it to the prolific Halifax director to still find time to nourish us all in another way—this time with the short How To Be At Home.
Released through the National Film Board’s short film collection The Curve—which is filled with films about how Canadians are navigating the pandemic—it’s a sequel to Dorfman’s 2010 viral short How To Be Alone. Both centre around verse by poet Tanya Davis, with How To Be At Home retooling the former’s monologue to fit these unprecedented times. (The visuals, meanwhile, are Dorfman’s signature tiny books, animated and lyrical like Davis’s words.)
“If people are your nourishment, I get you: Feel your feelings that undo you while you have to keep apart. Watch a movie in the dark and pretend someone is with you,” Davis says, halfway through How To Be At Home.
May we suggest you start with this one?
