Canadian filmmaker Andrea Dorfman’s (Parsley Days, Love That Boy) short film “How To Be Alone” has become a viral hit with over 350,000 views on Youtube. Word spread fast online about this mediation on loneliness based on a poem by Halifax poet Tanya Davis. Along with Facebook, the film has recieved link love from reddit, twitter (including the grand Poo-Bah of Twitter Roger Ebert), metafilter and popular blogs like Andrew Sullivan’s at The Atlantic.
Today the NFB posted their interview with Dorfman asking the director about the project’s origins, where it was shown before she uploaded it online and why she thinks it’s become so popular:
“It goes back to our need to belong. I think, as social primates, we want to feel a strong sense of belonging either in a relationship or to a community - or both. But also intrinsic to our humanity is a feeling that we are truly alone.”
UPDATE: CBC talks to Tanya Davis about the popularity of the short:
Davis said she doesn’t get any money from YouTube, but she thinks the worldwide exposure will help her career.
“I’m getting all these emails from people expressing their interest and how much they like the video. And some of them are brand new to my work,” she said.
