Cleft Lip

Abstract

Cleft Lip is a feature film and constitutes practice research located within the field of narrative independent film and world cinema. The film forms part of Knudsen’s ongoing critical and practical exploration of transcendent narrative forms and the impact of technologically inspired independence on the telling of prototypical stories.

What happens when fertility becomes a commodity in a fractured society? Oedipus reborn. Sophocles' classic of classics adapted for the 21st Century by Erik Knudsen into a contemporary tragedy about the unravelling of the most fundamental of relationships in society; that between a father, a mother and a child. Cleft Lip is set in the context of a world where donor eggs and sperm are freely traded as increasing numbers of people are having to resort to fertility treatment as a consequence of social changes, individual decisions and biological imperatives.