For writer, director, editor, and actor Avalon Fast, their latest feature film CAMP wasn't born from a fascination with summer camp as much as it was an inability to forget it. The filmmaker, who describes their work as "Girl Horror," has built a growing body of films (Honeycomb, Drinking and Driving) around the eerie emotional realities of adolescence. While CAMP follows Emily (played by Zola Grimmer), a young woman burdened by overwhelming guilt who finds herself working as a counselor at a mysterious troubled youth summer camp, the film's emotional foundations stem from Fast's own experiences growing up.
"I've got so many kinds of deranged memories from summer camp that just feel really eerie," Fast told Knotfest in an exclusive interview about their latest film. "I was in such a poor emotional place whenever I would go. I was so sensitive as a kid. I was in survival mode so I remember it so vividly because you’re so hyper aware when you’re in fight or flight.”
Unlike much of childhood, which Fast says has faded with time, camp remains vividly preserved in their memory. "Day to day in my childhood, I don't remember," they explain. "But I remember camp because you're taken from your regular environment that you're used to, and you're put in this place where you don't know anybody."
Check out our full review of 'CAMP'
The isolation of camp, separated from parents, familiar routines, and any sense of comfort, left a lasting impression. Looking back, Fast sees that experience through a different lens than most might. "People always talk about their memories of camp. I'm like, yeah, you have memories of camp because you were traumatized."
For Fast, those memories don't necessarily need to be tied to dramatic or life-altering events. Sometimes it's the smaller moments that linger longest. "I remember wasps being huge," they recall with a shudder. "So many wasps, and being locked in the bathroom by a group of kids. They were like, 'That'd be really funny if we lock her in the bathroom and see how long it would take her to make her way out or scream for help.'"
That complicated relationship between memory and trauma extends directly into Emily, the film's protagonist. Before arriving at camp, Emily has already endured two devastating tragedies, both of which leave her carrying immense guilt. Fast was interested in exploring what happens when someone experiences not just one but multiple traumatic events and begins to see themselves through those experiences.
"When something terrible has happened to you once, you can see it in a different way when something terrible happens again," Fast says. "I think your life can start to feel kind of cursed." The filmmaker points to people in their own life who have endured repeated hardships, people whose identities eventually become inseparable from the tragedies they've experienced.
"You bring somebody up, and it's like, 'Oh, that person, this is what happened to them,'" Fast says. "It becomes who you are. There’s no karmic understanding of it, and I think that’s what I was trying to explore with this character.” That eventually found its way into Emily's relationship with her father and her struggle to define herself beyond her pain. "All that's starting to be known of who she is as a person is what she's gone through.”
Despite the heavy subject matter, CAMP still frequently finds room for humor, particularly through Zola Grimmer's wonderfully deadpan performance as Emily. Fast credits both the script and Grimmer herself for helping the film find that balance. "I've never set out to make any of my movies funny," they say. "But I think life is funny. Even when it's really sad, it's funny. I think it shows up when you're being honest, and I think that’s what Zola was doing. She’s a very funny person, and the way she played the role is great.”
Visually, CAMP often feels suspended somewhere between memory and dream. Landscapes outside glass windows appear painted or animated, while reality itself seems to bend and soften around Emily's emotional state. For Fast, that aesthetic wasn't simply a stylistic choice. "It's either how I would like to see the world, or it's how I remember seeing the world as a kid," they explain.
Animator Sofiya Iurkevych contributed several of the film's more overtly animated frames, but Fast sees little distinction between those moments and the live-action imagery surrounding them. "Even when you get the full animated sequence, to me that still feels like you've just gone outside of the window and you're seeing the camp from a different lens. Without sounding crazy or like I’m hallucinating, I really do think I see the world in that way.”
Those dreamlike visuals are paired with some of the film's most emotionally devastating moments, including a pivotal confrontation in the rain that proved especially difficult to create. "That was horrible," Fast says with only half a laugh. The sequence presented challenges both technical and physical for the crew and cast. "One of our mics drowned, and we had to ADR it, so it's not the moment that we actually captured, which was heartbreaking. We also totally almost gave Zola hypothermia."
Thankfully, not every memory from production is quite so stressful. One of Fast's favorite moments in the film was creating the striking title card sequence involving an old television set. The early scene was created outside the main production schedule with cinematographer Eily Sprungman and actor Sophie Bawks-Smith before principal photography even began.
"It was one of those special moments where we got all the things we needed. We actually did that on set, and we just had that playing on a loop," Fast recalls. "It really set the tone for that intro party shoot." Looking back, the filmmaker still considers the sequence among their proudest achievements. "That section of media is one of my favorite things I've ever created artistically."
Fast's artistic journey has also recently included documenting the production of filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun's (I Saw the TV Glow, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) much anticipated upcoming project, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, an experience they describe as transformative on both a creative and personal level.
"Working with all of the people there, but Jane specifically, that was such a pivotal moment for me as a human," Fast says. More than simply observing another filmmaker's process, the experience became something much deeper. "It's such an important friendship and connection that I have with Jane, and beyond watching the way that they work, just experiencing them as a person has been life changing."
That perspective feels fitting for a filmmaker whose work is so deeply concerned with connection, memory, and the ways other people help us understand ourselves. Much like Emily's journey in CAMP, Fast's own creative path seems guided by the communities and relationships that emerge in unexpected places - even in the strange, unsettling wilderness of summer camp.
‘CAMP’ arrives in select theaters June 26th.
