CASINO!
Director: Izzy Leung
United States, 2025, 16 min
Shooting Format:Digital
Festival Year:2026
Category:Experimental
Genres:Experimental, Docu-fiction, Documentary
Cast:Judith Shakespeare, Ellen Orchid, Christina Britton, Chris Glen, Carol Johnson, Leora Kalish, Randi Lupo, Ron MacCloskey, John Sangiorgio, Rbt. Sps., Andy Troy, Terry-Ann Zander
Crew:Writers: Izzy Leung, Peter McCormack, Jz Tinneny, Gideon Berger. Producer: Jz Tinneny. Theatrical Director: Gideon Berger; Director of Photography: Jz Tinneny; Assistant Director: Peter McCormack; Editor: Sam Taffel, Izzy Leung; Sound Recordist: Lily Cunningham Perini; Additional Sound: Jeremiah M. Carter, Sarah Viviana Valdez; Line Producer: Sarah Viviana Valdez; Camera Operator: Conor Williams; Art Department: Clara Harlow, Lucy Kilgore; Gaffer: Daniel Cochran; Music: Kelby Clark; Sound Design: Jeremiah Carter, Tom Dixon. Sound Mixing: Tom Dixon. Additional Cinematography: Izzy Leung, Peter McCormack. Color: Mary Perrino. Finishing Editor: Sarah Viviana Valdez
Email:leungizzy@gmail.com
Synopsis
In this docu-fiction short, a group of community theater actors create a casino through a sense-memory workshop and explore the workshop’s effect on their own histories, imaginations, and performances.
Trailer
About the director
Izzy Leung is a multidisciplinary artist originally from California and living in New York. Working between film, photography, & sculpture, she is interested in using acts of repetition to explore cultural narratives surrounding built environments. Prior to CASINO!, Leung acted as Director of Photography on various films including Sometimes I Hear the Light Leak in Through the Corners of My Room directed by Jeremiah Carter and SUNSETBLOOMSASIFAFLOWER directed by Sarah Viviana Valdez.
Filmmaker's note
"So, we're going to build this casino."
CASINO! is an experimental documentary following a group of community theater actors as they create a casino through a sense-memory workshop. Oscillating between genres, CASINO! explores what it means to collaboratively create a film and build a fictional space together. The documentary form allows the production to extend beyond the cast and crew, to the pre-existing realities of the theater, casino, and beyond.
CASINO! began as an exploration of casinos and theaters as places of possibility – liminal spaces where we must suspend our disbelief in order to participate in the greater fantasy. I invited the actors to collectively imagine and build the space of the casino through improvisation, guided only by the idea that we would film in three parts; a sense memory workshop, interviews about gambling, and a scripted poker scene. We cast a group of performers, majority over the age of 60, and each arrived with entirely different characters and reasons for being on set. One of the cast members is my mother, who discovered her passion for stand up comedy in her early 60’s. We asked them to embrace a sense of play, collaboration, and to bring a story about gambling. The film weaves together their truthful memories and fabricated narratives without distinction, allowing the improvisational process to direct the narrative that became the film.
CASINO! asks questions about desire, obsession, and performance: Why do we gamble? What are we hoping to win? What drives our need to be seen, to be witnessed, to leave something behind? And for myself, as a filmmaker, how many elements are required to create a convincing film, play, scenario?