“Camp” writer and director Avalon Fast has a wonderfully specific genre designated for her film: “A bunch of girls in the woods doing weird stuff.”
As if that doesn’t sell a ticket already, trust that Fast’s dreamy vision of friendship, queerness and the occult is a singular experience. “Camp,” in theaters now via Dark Sky Films, follows Emily (Zola Grimmer), who begins working as a counselor at a remote camp for kids dealing with different types of trauma, much like she is. Once there, Emily bonds with four other counselors — played by Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis and Ella Reece — who begin to explore their witchy reality together.
To say more would be to spoil the soaring details contained within, the ideas of which Fast says have formed for years.
“It’s a blessing and a curse that the way I process my own feelings is to share them with the world,” Fast says. “As a kid making short films, it was more of a curiosity and creativity, whereas as I get older, it becomes more about sharing and being understood. I’ve found myself a little bit lost for words when I talk about ‘Camp,’ and maybe I’ve found that with everything that I’ve made. The best way that I’m able to share myself and to feel understood is to put it in film. Maybe that’s a little bit cliché, but that’s how it feels.”
