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Vasilios Papapitsios

@basil.ios

Help Us Finish @parapronoia Short Film, links below!
writer • filmmaker • artist | curious • conscious • creator | activist • advocate • accomplice
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Content Warning: Depictions of drug use and psychosis. When I was in the darkest chapter of my addiction, I was completely isolated and alone. Disconnected. Dissociated. The chaos of the world was overwhelming. The paranoia was overwhelming. Living with chronic illness—both physical and mental—was overwhelming. I didn’t want to die… but I wasn’t living either. I was suspended in a terrifying limbo. A lucid nightmare. PARAPRONOIA grew out of that place. I needed help. But I didn’t know how to ask for it at the time. I’m making this film for anyone who’s ever felt like a mutant in a world that no longer made sense—for anyone who’s felt broken, alien, isolated, or convinced they were too far gone to find their way back. This project chronicles my journey through addiction, psychosis, recovery, grief, healing, and ultimately, connection. It’s my way of turning one of the darkest periods of my life into something that, I hope, helps someone else feel a little less alone. Sharing this part of myself is both terrifying and deeply liberating! Welcome to the nightmare. We’ll find our way out together. Please consider donating to help us finish this project! LINK IN @parapronoia BIO <3 CAST Bri Giger @brigiger Jonathan Fernandez @jonathancfernandez Scarlett Letters @xoxoscarlettletters Carlton Wilborn @carltonwilbornrising Tona Mondragon @tonatzinmondragon Shawba @shawba Vasilios Papapitsios @basil.ios CREW Writer/Director/Producer: @basil.ios Vasilios Papapitsios Producer: @freshcarreras Fresh Carreras Producer: @mmoliternii Marco Molierni DP: @kenzo.dp Kenzo Le Production/Costume Design @stacia.muse Stacia Muse Asst. Costume Designer: @pigment_of_your_imagination Ava Youseffi Location Sound: @thatchrisgubbskid Chris Grubbs 1st AC: @pixeldustisaiah Isaiah Walk Gaffer: @lowkeygaffer Will Prada Key Grip: Jonathan Ray Swing: @ericjkim Eric Kim “Lucid Nightmare” Producer: @rushlikeathrill Rush Davis Mixer: @djsolmex Lewis Juan Negrete Composer/Vocalist: @mahawam.exe MAHAWAM Vocalist: @staramerasu Star Amerasu Vocalist: @basil.ios #mentalhealthawareness #HIVstigma #recoveryjourney #PARAPRONOIA #LucidNightmare
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3 days ago
Reality feeling a little… real? Ask your doctor about oxytoSIN™. Welcome to Reality Replacement Rehabilitation. Sponsored by Pandemonia Industries. Because your perception is our priority. Huge thanks to Marco @mmoliternii and Jonathan @jonathancfernandez for embracing the absurd with me. #PARAPRONOIA #LucidNightmare #IndieFilm #QueerHorror #DarkComedy
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4 days ago
⚛️🫟🧬 ORIENTATION FOR NEW MUTANTS ☔️🫧💜 If you’ve been wondering what the hell I’ve been making… this is your briefing! Stay tuned to hear a teeny, now not so secret, sample of my song “Come Alive” at the end! Welcome to PARAPRONOIA: a mutation pandemic, giant cosmic storms, alien hybrids, spirit guides with attitude, wormholes, ketamine psychosis, body horror, hilarious absurdity, music, dancing, and an unexpectedly heartfelt story about addiction, healing, and finding your way back to community. Totally normal stuff. In this video, I’m sharing the bigger vision behind the project and where your support is going. We’re raising $12,500 to finish LUCID NIGHTMARE—the edit, VFX, color, and sound—while laying the creative foundation for the stop-motion and 2.5D animated chapters that follow. If this strange little universe speaks to you, I’d be so grateful if you’d help us bring it to life. Help us wake up within the nightmare. Find the Love Within. Make it Come Alive. FUNdraiser link is in the bio!! Welcome to PARAPRONOIA. Please follow @parapronoia for all the updates 💜 The background music is the instrumentals from my unreleased track “Come Alive” (sampled at the end), produced by Rush Davis @rushlikeathrill and featuring Rush, Star Amerasu @staramerasu and MAHAWAM @mahawam.exe . #PARAPRONOIA #LucidNightmare #IndieFilm #addictionrecovery #mentalhealthawareness
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5 days ago
⚡️ASCENSION SYMPTOMS? The Great Central Sun is speaking through the Mystic Medium. An urgent transmission to help us wake up inside the nightmare. This experimental sequence comes from an early short-form version of LUCID NIGHTMARE, which screened at the Whitney Museum during Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art in December 2024. Huge thank you to Tonatzin Mondragon @tonatzinmondragon and Carlton Wilborn @carltonwilbornrising for lending their incredible voices to this piece. In the complete narrative version of LUCID NIGHTMARE, they’ll appear fully realized as The Mystic Medium and The Great Central Sun. I can’t wait for you to meet them. #WhitneyMuseum #LucidNightmare #ExperimentalFilm #QueerHorror #IndieFilm
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6 days ago
Our fundraiser is live, and today I’m finally sharing one of the funniest and strangest scenes from PARAPRONOIA: LUCID NIGHTMARE. We’re raising $12,500 to seed the next phase of development and production. Please watch, share, and support through the link in bio. At the epicenter of the storm in the Free People’s Autonomous Zone, field reporter Sebean Ransom, played with total commitment by @xoxoscarlettletters , opens her live report with: “Well Scott, as you can see, the rain is just pounding us.” The delivery destroys me every time. She’s interrupted by a Local Mutant, played hilariously by @shawba , who flirts with her, shouts out their family on live television, declares “I’m alive, motherfuckers!” and holds up a sign reading: WE ARE HERE, HAVE NO FEAR. By the time we return to Sebean, the storm has completely pummeled her—and she is mutating live on air. Disoriented but still reporting, she leaves us with the perfect conclusion: “The more we learn, the less we know.” This is the first time we truly meet the mutants of Parapronoia, and it becomes clear that they aren’t monsters. They are simply changed… hybrid humans adapting to a world that has already transformed them. Trauma changes us. Love changes us. Survival changes us. We are mutating and evolving all the time. The question isn’t whether we will change, but whether we can recognize ourselves, and each other, inside what we become. Scarlett and Shawba were incredible troopers, essentially being sprayed with a sprinkler attached to a hose outside our producer @freshcarreras home. I’m grateful for @jonathancfernandez playing the news anchor…whose name is definitely not Scott…which somehow makes Sebean’s perfectly confident opening line even funnier. A huge thank-you to @kenzo.dp behind the camera, @ojalavision for the brilliant special-effects makeup, and @stacia.muse for capturing so much battered whimsy through the costume. Please donate, share this clip, and send it to someone who loves strange queer cinema. Help us wake up inside the nightmare. Link in bio. #Parapronoia #QueerHorror #BodyHorror #DarkComedy #humanilluminationvirus
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7 days ago
I started writing PARAPRONOIA in 2022, while I was still trapped inside the life I was trying to escape. I thought I was creating an absurdist sci-fi film, but somewhere along the way, the project became a map toward the connection, healing, and life I desperately needed. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing the music, creatures, collaborators, and deeply personal journey behind this world—as well as what it will take to finally complete the film. For most of my life, I thought strength meant carrying everything alone. Recovery taught me that strength  looks like asking for help. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has supported my journey along the way.  PARAPRONOIA is Coming Alive!  Please follow @parapronoia for all the updates 💜 The background music is the instrumentals from my unreleased track “Love Within” made with the help of some absolutely amazing artists. Produced by Rush Davis and featuring @rushlikeathrill , @staramerasu and @mahawam.exe . My song Lucid Nightmare featuring Star Amerasu & MAHAWAM is out now on all platforms! #PARAPRONOIA #IndependentFilm #QueerFilm #ArtistJourney #RecoveryThroughArt
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10 days ago
The wold is rigged… power manufactures your consent—wake up, think critically, resist propaganda, refuse apathy, and defend your mind. It is more important than ever to defend our minds against manipulation, challenge mainstream narratives, resist the normalization of atrocity, trust our instincts, and refuse to abandon our humanity just because the truth is uncomfortable. I researched, contributed to curriculum and helped creative produce on Noam Chomsky’s class — a thinker who has spent decades exposing how power, media, and institutions shape what we believe. Chomsky has spent decades exposing how media manufactures consent — how institutions shape public perception to protect power, normalize exploitation, and keep people confused, divided, or numb. Propaganda isn’t just something that happens elsewhere — it’s woven into our daily information diet. 
Social media drives people into self-reinforcing bubbles. It’s polarizing and driving people to more extreme views. Self-education. Inquiry. Solidarity. Because cynicism, nihilism, and chosen ignorance only serve the systems that want us passive. We can’t numb ourselves into apathy. We can’t let cynicism or nihilism replace responsibility. And we can’t deny our humanity just because reality is painful. Some words from Chomsky to spark your own research… “Christian zionism existed long before jewish zionism and this is the last phase of European colonization” “Wage labor — formerly called wage slavery — is an extension of slavery.” “Politics is the shadow cast over society by big business.” I’ve posted some clips from the class and some found ones as well…with some personal touches 😆 Watch the class for free here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_BabRO4UCQ #sovereignty #noamchomsky #freepalestine #abolishice #explorepage
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6 months ago
Papapitsios describes LUCID NIGHTMARE as a “meditation on how we can(not) heal in the environments that make us sick, from the perspective of an infected neurodivergent faggot.” Combining auto-fiction with magical realism, Papapitsios humorously reimagines narratives around mental health and chronic illness. ♦️ Vasilios will speak at the NYC premiere @whitneymuseum on Dec 1, 4pm, presented in partnership with @studiomuseum — get your free tickets at the link in our bio! ❌ RED REMINDS ME features seven artist videos reflecting the emotional spectrum of living with HIV today 📍 Can’t make the premiere? There are screenings at 130+ partners around the world on/around Dec 1 to mark Day With(out) Art / World AIDS Day! Find one near you at video.visualaids.org #daywithoutart ——- Vasilios Papapitsios (they/he) is an writer, filmmaker and artist originally from the South whose work transmutes stigma and trauma with a flare for the fantastical. Vasilios has contributed to projects for MasterClass, AwesomenessTV, and Emmy-nominated intersectional media platform OTV - Open Television. They were recognized as a Notable Writer in the 2021 OUTFEST screenwriting lab and as an artivist storyteller in residence with UCLA’s Through Positive Eyes. Vasilios creates very strange, frank, and whimsical worlds for us to wander off in, blending genres and blurring boundaries within advocacy, education, and entertainment. Video by @bayley_june
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2 years ago
🚨 Red Reminds Me.../Day With(out) Art 2024 🚨 Seven new videos reflecting the emotional spectrum of living with HIV today by: 🔺Gian Cruz 🔺Milko Delgado 🔺Imani Harrington 🔺David Oscar Harvey 🔺Mariana Iacono and Juan De La Mar 🔺Nixie 🔺Vasilios Papapitsios 🔴 RSVP now for the NYC premiere @whitneymuseum, Sunday, Dec 1, 4PM (link in bio) 🔴 100+ more screenings worldwide — head to video.visualaids.org to find one near you! #daywithoutart @visualaids @giancruzstudio @milko.delgado @mariana_iacono @juan_delamar @nixienixienixie @basil.ios
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2 years ago
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3 years ago
In honor of National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day today, Vasilios Papapitsios shares his journey from diagnosis with HIV, to fighting stigma, to finding healing through art ❤️ @Basil.ios #TheAIDSMonument #NGMHAAD #dailytarheel #homophobia #hivstigma #uncchapelhill #uncchapelhillalumni #uncchlgbt #poz4pleasure #noshame #viralillumination #goingviral #transmitlove #hivirl #selflove #banishstigma #hivawareness #aidsawareness #endstigma #hivpositive #vihda #sexpositive #infectjoy #transmitlove #selflove #banishstigma #transmutation #aidsalchemy
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3 years ago
Our 4th episode of My Health Agenda features special guest, artist 🎨 and HIV activist Vas Papapitsios. @basil.ios brings the series full circle by providing his journey from growing up queer in the South to confronting his positive HIV diagnosis, and taking an artistic approach to his work as an activist. 🫀🖌 📌The episode will be on 🔗LATV.com this Wednesday, so don’t forget to watch. . . . . . #latvnetwork #lgbt #lgbtq #latvproud #pride #proud #gay #bi #bisexual #asexual #lesbian #transgender #transsexual #queer #questioning #ally #lovewins #lgbtqia #nonbinary #love #loveislove #hivpositive #hivpositivo #hivawareness #endhivstigma
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5 years ago
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