A female narrator tells us how she came in possession of a laptop and a handwritten diary of Julian Castronovo, a young aspiring filmmaker who disappeared while researching his subject that he came across in a New York apartment by accident. So starts Debut, Or Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued, an auto-fiction, a mystery within a mystery about a young filmmaker and a missing art forger. Castronovo introduces himself in a webcam- his age, his height, his proportionally bigger head compared with the rest of his body, and what is about to unfold in his debut feature. His trajectory is not dissimilar to that of hundreds of other young aspiring American filmmakers - moving to New York, then LA, pulling some shady connections and struggling while doing odd-end jobs to survive. Let's set aside his good looks and pompous title for the time being, because his investigation into a missing Chinese art forger is, indeed, very intriguing.
With some connection from a friend, he landed an apartment in New York. While repainting the walls, he finds a hard copy of Don Quixote and a drawing of a deer with three digit numbers written in the back in a hidden compartment. Doing some online research, he finds the former tenant was an art forger from China who worked for the landlord who turned out to be a gallery owner. The gallery owner later got busted for fraud and served prison terms. But the forger disappeared and has been missing for twenty years.
Castronovo moves to LA. There he hustles with fake business cards that he works for various movie studios and assumes a Chandler-esque detective identity- wearing black suits and ties from his catering server job. His hustling eventually catches the eye of a mid-level independent movie producer and together they shop around for funding to make a very movie about the mystery about the disappearance of the art forger. Some more mysterious phone calls later, he gets a hold of a box full of videotapes and other trinkets that belong to the disappeared forger, Fawn Ma. They reveal that Ma was not only a forgery artist but a conceptual performance artist which we see the glimpses of throughout the film.
The short feature is done very economically: there's no actual footage of any action. It's done through narration and webcam footage of himself talking. Any location shots are done with puppets donning Robert Smith hair. The rest are static shots of clues left behind by the forger and her art work - short videos, photos. With the photos of the forger pointing finger at objects and buildings, Castronovo tracks down her whereabouts, using google maps. And it turns out to be in the Czech Republic, coincidentally the place where an interested mysterious investor resides as well.
I have to give Castronovo credit for creating an entertaining yarn in a short feature with no budget. Debut hooks you in and never lets you go. It's an enjoyable ride spiked with ingenuity and creativity suited for social media generation, doing a lot with so little.
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