Stella! Black & White
Text: Blake Parker
Music: John Mills-Cockell
in collaboration with
Michael Hayden and Walsh Films

At one level, the narrative concerns the adventures of a single character—Stella—(Latin for star)—the star of her own story. The world she explores is that of contemporary city life conceived of as a network of bioelectrical and technological representations. At another level, the narrative concerns the education of the soul (Stella = soul). The story itself begins as a radio soap opera. Its central theme concerns the way in which Stella (or soul) is caught between the contradictory energies of the wild body and the body tamed.

The tale is a moral allegory. And morality in the techno-primitive jungle is at best a question of ambiguity and ambivalence. Music is the temporal conduit of emotional energy. Emotional energy takes this or that shape according to the representational mode, the dictates of memory, desire or necessity. The central theme is the confrontation of conscious & unconscious modes of being. Metamorphosis is the bottom line.

The two mythical characters who define the territory within which Stella moves are the "evil" Picture-Skinner and his cohorts the photo-twins (the dualism of reality & its image, positive & negative) and the "good" reverend Billy Flame, a somewhat demented ancient radio-evangelist, protector of animals and children...