Tickets

Deny, Defend, Depose

7 & 7:45 screenings

Stanya Kahn ©2026

TRT: 30:58 minutes

Single channel color digital video with stereo sound

Music by Cameron Outlaw, Acid Arab, Baseck, Caterina Barbieri, 

Unknown Origin, and Stanya Kahn. 

Deny, Defend, Depose is a short film made entirely of tweets collected since the morning of December 04, 2024, when a masked person in New York City assassinated United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson with a veterinary euthanasia pistol and a silencer, then fled on a Citibike. The shooting was captured on surveillance camera and immediately went viral. Twitter (now “X”) erupted in uncanny unison: the collective response was joy. Celebratory snark and rage-fueled one-liners spat out deadly statistics and stories of failed care in the US healthcare system. The feed was flooded with giddy and outrageous hate-bonding. Intrigued by a spontaneous class war saga and remarkable mass alignments, Kahn screen-captured tweets as the news broke, continuing for over a year as facts of the incident unfolded and anecdotes about systemic insurance abuse accumulated. Initially designing the collection to be a book, Kahn quickly realized the potential reach and apropos infotainment nature of a time-based work. (A book is in the works, pending funding.)

Set to an acid/jungle soundtrack—Deny, Defend, Depose is at once historical document, cultural timestamp and an ebullient reflection of an astonishing spike in the zeitgeist. Edited up to the current moment, the piece was set to release in the lead up to the September 8^th  start of the state trial for prime suspect Luigi Mangione in New York. With the August 14^th guilty plea (a move by the defense to avoid double jeopardy,) the state trial is now postponed to December 18^th, 2026.