Despite the film industry’s century-old quest for love, and after countless variations on the theme, we still ask ourselves this question: “Can love conquer everything? Can it possibly free us from everything?” Jon HEWITT’s 2009 film Darklovestory, a classic low-budget digital production, presents a couple, Gil and Gretchen, who have fallen head over heels in love with each other. They plan one last big gig to ensure perfect ending to their perfect love. Wearing stupid masks, they attempt a supermarket robbery, which, they quickly find out, is rather difficult. The failed attempt plunges the lovers into a cobweb of unexpected incidents, and they find themselves wandering the night streets of Sydney, like some Alice in Wonderland. HEWITT, an Australian director who was invited to last year’s PiFan with Acolytes (2008), is uninhibited in sharing his cinematic styles, sensitivity and talent with the audience in Darklovestory. Employing techniques such as multiple exposure, frame speed manipulation, and wide-angle lens-shot space isolation, he turns the lovers’ night together into a strange nightmare, ending everything at exactly the same place where things had started. The world hasn’t changed. What matters is the love that bound them in the first place. (Jin PARK)