AVANT WORD FILMS

[avantwordfilms]

Bal (Honey)

dir. Semih Kaplanoğlu Turkey/Germany / 2010 / 103 min. / 1.85:1 World Premiere: Berlinale (2010)

Captivating both in the soft-spoken, sensual power of its ritualistic narrative exploration and for its value as a living cultural document of a rapidly vanishing way of life, Bal shepherds us into a seemingly timeless agrarian community balanced just on the cusp of drastic existential sea change. Director Kaplanoğlu immerses us in a kind of handmade, frontier reality already the stuff of folklore in much of the Westernized world, the kind of life where symbiotic relationships between man and all constituents of the natural world are delicately, almost religiously maintained. Falcons are trained and raised as integral members of the family.  Honeybee populations are guarded and intuitively tracked in order to cultivate their honey, which likewise instills a reverence for the venerable mountain forest where they construct their hives, and so on and so forth. Naturally this fragile interdependence also means dire consequences when even one component of the ecological circuitry is distressed.   

Uncertainty enters into the lives of one such family in the remote forestland of Turkey when the year’s honey harvest, their main source of income, is inexplicably lacking. When the patriarch fails to return from a venture deep into the woods in search of the missing bee colonies, the life of the family’s young son Yusuf is turned upside-down. Certainly we’re all conscious of the recent bee colony collapse crisis and its impact on industrialized farming outfits, but when the same phenomenon is wrought upon an unsuspecting, isolated village with a tradition of sustainable practices, the effect arrives as a more ominous force entirely, a change in fortune bordering on the supernatural.    

Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2010 Berlinale, Bal’s richly hued cinematography is awash in deep amber tones and seems instinctively in touch with the spellbinding stillness of the place.  The third installation in what is now referred to as the Yusuf Trilogy, so called for the character that serves as its continuous through-line, provides a stunning portraiture of its namesake as a young boy, struggling to grasp the dramatic changes hovering ever nearer with each fading season.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Lost Colony available for purchase!

The wait is over!  At long last LOST COLONY is now available for DVD/Bluray order and VOD digital purchase via VHX!  Visit the film website at www.lostcolonyfilm.com to order on DVD, Bluray, or as a digital download via VHX!

"'This book should be made into a movie' is often said, but “this movie ought to be written as a book” is a rarer statement. It applies to Lost Colony, an indie that roils with inner conflicts and percolates with a rich sense of place."  - Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter

[avantwordfilms]

Lost Colony Trailer

[avantwordfilms]

Sarah Prefers to Run

dir. Chloe Robichaud Canada / 2013 / 97 min. / 1.78:1 World Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (2013)

The rigid world of competitive athletics, steeped in routine and almost robotic repetition, may seem a rather strange and sterile terminus from which to originate a story exploring the parameters of feminine identity.  In Québécois director Chloé Robichaud’s debut feature, however, this seems to be precisely the point.  Athletics—in this case track and field—are at a curious frontier where the traditional binaries that differentiate male from female converge almost asymptotically toward a normative condition that is at once hyper-masculine (in terms of physical aggression) and largely asexual (in that genders are kept entirely separate in virtually all instances).  This paradox is exactly what makes Sarah such a fascinating character to watch as she navigates a baffling hormonal minefield over the course of her first year on a college track team.  Away from the comforts of her predictable suburban home for the first time and playing the part in a sham marriage simply because it will afford her financial relief for school, becoming a self-aware, autonomous person is harder than she ever imagined.  Small wonder that Sarah prefers to run. 

Fearlessly played by 2014 RiverRun Spark Award honoree Sophie Desmarais, whom many of you may remember from Denis Côté’s 2011 offering Curling, Sarah is captured with an appropriately nervous restraint and a sly, deadpan humor that masks her inability to connect with most of her coeds.  At times she’s so focused on competition and out of touch with the larger world around her that you begin to wonder if she’s in fact pathological.  But then again aren’t most teenagers, after all?  An uncertain romantic interlude with a fellow competitor, a jealous, emasculated faux-husband, and the arrival of a worrisome medical condition eventually force Sarah to search within herself for the path that will truly fulfill her.  Partway through the film she’s interviewed by a zealous student journalist, who takes umbrage at the fact that she views Donovan Bailey as a role model for earning a medal at the Olympics with a Canadian flag draped over his shoulders.  What bothers him about her statement is that he perceives it as an admission that she’s not an advocate for a sovereign Quebec, that she seems to identify with the larger national identity of Canada.  What he fails to understand about her, however, is that what she really admires is simply his athletic achievement as an individual.  Her singularity, for better or for worse, is asserted through her running, her own internal drive to outrace her previous self limitations.  What could be more sovereign than that?

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Hide Your Smiling Faces

dir. Daniel Patrick Carbone USA/2013 /81 min./1.78:1 World Premiere: Berlinale (2013) US Premiere: Tribeca Film Festival (2013) Distributor: Tribeca Film

Signaled boldly and evocatively by a cold-blooded clash of fauna in the opening frame of Carbone’s debut feature, predation and mortality cast long shadows over the course of events that unfolds for a pair of brothers during the languor of a formative summer vacation. At an already uncertain phase of maturation in their lives, awash in a cocktail of rupturing hormones and misplaced aggression, Eric and Tommy find themselves suddenly confronted by the tenuousness of existence when a devastating loss hits close to home. 

In struggling to process the complexities of what this blow means to themselves and the families around them, the two take refuge in one another as an undertow of grief takes hold on the community. Alternating sharply between an insular, experiential point of view and stark, objective detachment, Carbone’s camera (skillfully orchestrated by cinematographer Nicholas Bentgen) probes the flourishing backwoods of rural New Jersey for signs of a higher order to quiet the spiritual unrest of Eric, Tommy and a litany of friends and neighbors equally affected. Amid the puzzle of pondwater, fern and stonework ruins they search for a sliver of comfort as the substance of their lives irrevocably changes.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Birth

Well folks, at long last the film is receiving its final touches in post-production--many thanks in that regard to the likes of sound supervisor Jeff Seelye, editors Chris Iversen and Ian Johnson, colorist Ayumi Ashley, and sound editors Tommy Stang and Scott Ferrara.  With spring sprialing ever upward from the loam, this restless seedling of a film is finally ready to push through the topsoil and greet the living daylights out of the world.  In a little over a month it'll be doing just that, as the fine folks down at the Indie Grits Film Festival in Columbia, SC--hometown of our gallant UPM and producer Adam Tate no less--have invited Lost Colony to screen in competition as the opening night feature film on Wednesday, April 15th.  It's an exciting, up-and-coming festival in the Southeast run by some visionary individuals--Andy Smith and Seth Gadsden in particular--and one that I admire a lot, so it's a great privilege to be featured in their lineup once again (my whatsit of a short film Sapsucker played there back in 2009).

If you're interested in attending, tickets are on sale at this very moment here. It's the first of what we hope are many, many more future opportunities to see the film on the big screen, but it'll be a special night to roll on the first public screening of the finished work after a decade and change in the making.  We'd love to see some friendly faces out there in the seats if you're interested in making the trip.  Anyway looking forward to sharing more great news and additional screening dates in the coming months, so keep checking back as the year unfurls itself for more updates. Look forward to seeing you all soon somewhere out there along the dusty trail.

[avantwordfilms]

Dogtooth

dir. Yorgos Lanthimos Greece / 2009 / 94 min. / 2.35:1 World Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (2009) US Premiere: Cucalorus Film Festival (2009) Distributor: Kino International

Winner of the coveted Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Lanthimos’ high concept and darkly comic parable explores the damaged world view imposed on three teens by a manipulative set of middle-class parents who make an art form of the developmental psychology experiment. The resultant reality is a manufactured world where the word down may literally mean up, jumbo jets fall from the sky indiscriminately, and a common housecat is a vicious beast to be feared, among countless other rigorously reinforced incongruities. Though the sort of domestic petrie dish dynamic maintained by Father and Mother—and the deliberate absence of name identification in favor of generic designations only heightens the mindwarp—does naturally elicit more than a few moments of psychologically pummeling imagery, Lanthimos’ endgame is always in sight with pristine clarity, and indeed coalesces into a devastatingly moving tableau laden with methodical mischief and hysterical satire on the whole. 

Perhaps most shrewd is the film’s self-reflexive employment of mass media instruments as accomplices to the subterfuge—illogical vocabulary lessons recorded to cassette tape for the childrens’ home-school study sessions and VHS tapes used as barter for altering instinctual behavior, amongst other media, figure largely in the madcap rewiring process being played out on screen. This, in addition to Father’s infatuation with recording banal home movie footage to his camcorder and a brutally revelatory scene where a VCR is weaponized into into a blunt-force implement, embeds yet another fascinating layer within Dogtooth’s already didactic pastiche. Slowly the structured lives of Father and Mother’s curiously blond-haired, blue-eyed offspring begin to degenerate, caught in the disorienting feedback loop of misinformation and sheer fenced-off isolation, culminating in a monolithic final sequence that won’t soon be forgotten. Daringly incendiary, the film fittingly deploys a clinical and jaundiced color palette rendered in razor-sharp anamorphic widescreen, and leaves no pathological stone unturned. Equal parts absurdist comedy and stark cautionary tale, Dogtooth bears witness to a fascist playbook being sketched freehand and implemented by guardians who believe they have the most principled of intentions at heart.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

The Student (El Estudiante)

dir. Santiago Mitre Argentina / 2011 / 110 min. / 1.85:1 World Premiere: BAFICI (2011) US Premiere: New York Film Festival (2011) Distributor: Cinema Tropical

At first glance, the bustling Buenos Aires campus that protagonist Roque encounters at the outset of Santiago Mitre’s electric debut feature The Student appears to have more in common with a labyrinthine housing project or a Warhol-esque artist collaborative than a university. Tagged with graffiti art, cultural arts and political posters papering nearly every square inch of the interior space, windows and fixtures in varying states of disrepair, it’s not the stately learning environment that Americans typically picture when thinking about an institution of higher education. What it lacks in aesthetic orderliness, however, it makes up for in impassioned discourse, enlightened thought processes and student interconnectivity. This is a working template for the classroom as organism; a living, breathing, and constantly mutating environment where students and faculty alike are refreshingly activated in constructing their campus experience. What Roque stumbles onto in this, his third attempt at university study, is quite unlike anything he’s ever encountered before. Initially more interested in skirt-chasing than applying himself, he can’t help but be swept up in the energy of the hotly contested student election season beginning on campus. Of course a serendipitous run-in with Paula, an attractive young female professor, only accelerates Roque’s transformation into politically awakened student and activist. At times the back-channel dealings and shifts in affiliation are frenzied enough to make your head spin—and rest assured Mitre’s frenetic visual style is precisely the point—but the longview portrait of Argentinean politics that The Student conveys is pulse-pounding, kinetic, and utterly fascinating to the last frame. Using his rugged attractiveness and strategic acumen to his advantage, Roque proves to be a quick study indeed. Through his involvement with Paula and, later, the Machiavellian older professor Acevedo vying for a leadership position on campus, we’re introduced to a completely different political structure than exists in the US, where student elections can and do actually factor into the larger, national sphere and co-eds are empowered to enact swift changes on the campuses they inhabit. Mitre isn’t merely content to etch an incisive political parable here, however. Roque, Paula, et al. instead transcend simple character devices to become sophisticated vessels for exploring the fluid dynamics of sexual and political power—and find that the line between them is far more blurred than any textbook would confess.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Curling

dir. Denis Côté

Canada / 2010 / 92 min. / 1.85:1 World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival (2010) US Premiere: New Directors/New Films (2011) Distributor: Big World Pictures

It stands to reason that a film as arcane and thought-provoking as Denis Côté’s masterful latest effort deserves an equally ponderous title, does it not? And, while the namesake Curling is not so wholly ambiguous as An Andalusian Dog or even Magnolia—characters are in literal fact depicted playing the Olympic sport of curling on-screen, after all—the game’s relevance to the narrative or the cinematic lives of its central players is tenuous at best. When considered along a more conceptual arc of thought, however, the label begins to resemble a sort of tonal talisman for decoding the underlying conflict of the film, the tension that lingers like a chilled cloud of breath exhaust in the arctic winter half-light. Think curling, as in the atrophy of a fallen leaf slowly coiling inward as the thermometer mercury plummets. Think even of curling the sport, and the formal elements of a pastime that anchors upon the deliberate sliding of heavy, frozen stones along a sheer bed of ice. There’s a weight, a downward pressure, an innate sense of deterioration slowly descending upon us. In other words, it’s a film that works on you in an extremely visceral way.

Sheltered tween Julyvonne’s awkward eye exam in the opening sequence wryly foreshadows the opaque, just-beyond-focus sensibility that is to follow, as the growing rift between her and overprotective single father Jean-Francois manifests itself in a waking dreamscape laden with surreal encounters and surprising imagery. Played by the real-life father-daughter duo of Emmanuel and Philomène Bilodeau, the simmering of their discord feels truly genuine as Julyvonne is cut off little by little from virtually all contact with the outside world, save for the few, sparsely rationed doses of pop radio she’s permitted—to wit, Debbie Gibson’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” has never taken on such bleak meaning. The pair’s relative isolation slowly begins to invoke enigmatic (if not out-and-out seasonal affective) visions of crime scenes, human bowling pins, and tigers held captive on the snow-coated wastelands of rural Quebec, a testament to the deleterious effects of isolation even in its most well-intentioned observance.

Côté’s inspired artistic vision for the film was rewarded with Best Director honors at Switzerland’s Locarno International Film Festival last year and has bolstered his reputation as one of Canada’s most impressive new filmmakers. In tandem with other talented young Québécois directors like Denis Villeneuve (Incendies, nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film at the 2011 Oscars) and Xavier Dolan (I Killed My Mother, Laurence Anyways), he has helped to introduce a formidable new generation of French-Canadian filmmakers to the world stage.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Obvious Child

dir. Gillian Robespierre USA/2014/84 min./2.35:1 World Premiere: Sundance Film Festival (2014) International Premiere: Rotterdam Film Festival (2014) Distributor: A24

There’s a strong tendency towards the cynical and self-satisfied in many an unapologetic Gen Y comedy of recent lineage...yes, we’re looking at you Juno and all Lena Dunham vehicles across the board.  The iconoclastic posturing, the textspeak, the ironic t-shirts, body art and the indie soundtracks have become a sort of contrived, self-mutilating shorthand for positioning oneself as “plugged in” or whatever slang is moving the dials among the nation’s youth this week.  We’re happy to report that Gillian Robespierre’s marvelously realized Obvious Child, while certainly unapologetic and sharing many surface level similarities with its skeptical cousins (and likely will market itself as thus), is also as sincere and on-the-level a comedy as they come.  How could it not be, with a reference to a Paul Simon song in the title, after all? Chalk this fact up to savvy, thoughtful direction from Robespierre and a daring, heartwrenchingly vulnerable breakout performance from recent SNL alum Jenny Slate, until now probably best known for her voicing of the too-cute-for-words online character Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.  

In addition to tackling with grace and insight the perennially sensitive issue of a woman’s right to choose, the film is that rare commodity not to be missed primarily because it is just damned funny.  Not just funny ha ha, either, we’re talking honest-to-God muscle-pulling, tear-inducing hilarity of the sort that defines careers and makes best of decade lists.  Loosely structured around the open mic stand-up sessions of comedienne Donna Stern, a la Louie or Seinfeld, Slate holds no noun or verb too dear in airing out the unfortunate, often bawdy details of her private life—immediately getting her dumped by her boyfriend just in time for Valentine’s Day.  UNCSA alum Jake Lacy (“Plop” from The Office’s final season) plays a pitch-perfect, clueless in khakis Mr. Wrong who, through circumstances largely related to blood-alcohol level, finds himself thrust headlong into Donna’s drama.  Likewise bolstered by finely tuned supporting performances from the likes of Richard Kind, David Cross, Gaby Hoffman and Gabe Liedman, I offer only the obligatory title song lyrics in further support of this trenchant comedic conception.  I say “why deny the obvious child?”

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Crab Trap

dir. Oscar Ruiz Navia Colombia / 2009 / 95 min. / 1.85:1 International Premiere: Toronto International Film Festival (2009) European Premiere: Berlinale (2010) Distributor: Outsider Pictures

Colombia’s 2010 submission to the Academy for Best Foreign Language Film, Crab Trap’s proceedings unfold in the Afro-Colombian community of La Barra on Colombia’s verdant and moody Pacific coast, a region heretofore relegated to little more than a blip on the cinematic radar. The point is clearly not lost on promising director Navia in his first feature, as the narrative takes the perspective of a young, light-skinned man seeking to escape his past by hiring a fishing boat there, signaling the collision of cultures to come as he surveys his decidedly darker-hued compatriots for the first time. In fact, the dialectic is cunningly hinted at much earlier, in the film’s opening sequence, when the backpacking stranger is confronted with a cryptic footprint in the loam. The vestige, cupping rainwater and mirroring back the jungle world in its periphery, functions both as a tip of the cap to film theorists (Bazin’s death mask essays come to mind) as well as a stark forewarning of the presence of “the other”—for after all it is not the footprint itself that warrants reflection, but the imagined counterpart it represents. 

It is in these moments of heightened, highly evocative visual language that Navia confides a sense of cinematic clarity beyond his years. Colliding elements of documentary-like realism (including extensive casting of non-professionals) with stunning frames of almost painterly precision, he strikes just the right balance between curiosity and detachment in investigating the clash between this remote village and modernity. Likewise impressive is the way in which the director implicates himself and his craft in the erosion of the village’s well-formed identity. To that end, the introduction of stereo speakers that spasm to the same banal beat over and over, the afternoon spent by children entranced in a mindless Kung Fu flick just minutes after debating the evils of having one’s picture taken, even the Chaplin-esque schtick that our protagonist plays at to amuse a child all serve as insidious conspirators in the colonization. There is also an undeniable novelty that accompanies the foreign thing, and the townsfolk are fascinating in the way many of them relish the arrival of outsiders while distrusting them altogether. The town elder Cerebro seems to encapsulate the laissez-faire stoicism of his culture most aptly. In a gorgeous canoeing sequence through an overgrown canal, he confesses that he was “born in a stream” and seems a living, breathing manifestation of the planet’s consciousness, unfazed at this temporary disturbance to its biorhythm. “Take it easy,” he says to his passenger. “This is only the beginning.”

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

Post Tenebras Lux

dir. Carlos Reygadas Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany / 2012 / 115 min. / 1.37:1 International Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (2012) Distributor: Strand Releasing

Deriving its title from a passage in the Latin translation of the Old Testament’s Book of Job (which loosely translates to “after darkness, light”), Carlos Reygadas’ fragmented moral tone poem revolves around a middle-class Mexican family who relocate to a remote village in the mountains seemingly in search of a truer, cathartic existence more in alignment with the natural world. The film begins with an ecstatically evocative, nearly 8-minute long sequence of Reygadas’ cherubic daughter Rut frolicking obliviously among the puddles of a waterlogged vale, long-legged dogs and horses lumbering serenely as a growing thunderstorm gradually displaces the dusklight. It’s breathtaking, baroque imagery of the finest order, at once dazzling and ominously haunting, and in a preverbal, tonal sense perfectly portends the inner darkening its human vessels will bear out. The curious, mirror-like parallax that vignettes the edges of the frame throughout casts a ghostlike doubling on the imagery and grounds the work in a sort of omniscient, moral detachment that informs everything passing in front of the lens. This is the thrilling, freeform artifact of a freakishly inventive master at work, the kind that heartens those who truly believe in the limitlessness of cinematic expression and sends smoke billowing from the ears of the rigid plot and narrative fetishists. And I’ve yet to even mention the psychedelic, Technicolor red devil and his toolbox that pays a nocturnal housecall in the sequence immediately following.

Reygadas reveals more about this erudite family, particularly patriarch Juan and his wife Natalia, in scenes that bridge unknowable spans of time and jump forward and backward in chronology—some giving glimpses into their younger days of experimentation in Western Europe, others depicting their near future exploits as bourgeois parents spouting philosophy at a family dinner party. Their relationship with the community of poorer people around them never seems more than superficially congenial, and when a local builder who goes by the handle of Seven becomes more involved in Juan’s affairs, the delicate equilibrium they’ve established in the countryside is endangered and threatens to come crashing down. However relevant these specific narrative fragments may ultimately seem, however, Post Tenebras Lux’s preferred consciousness is likely as a series of waking dreams configured around the idea of original sin and the transference of pain and evil. Indeed, evil seems a finite and manifest energy as sure as the sky, no plant, animal or molecule excepted, in Reygadas’ heady and unprecedented final act.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

General Orders No. 9

dir. Robert Persons USA / 2009 / 72 min. US Premiere: Atlanta Film Festival (2009) International Premiere: HotDocs International Film Festival (2010) Distributor: Variance Films

Lush with the bucolic imagery and iconography uniquely representative of the American Deep South, General Orders No. 9 immediately transfixes with its churning visual carousel of rusted-out weathervanes, rotting remnants of oaken polebarns, wolf trees standing solemn and solitary in abandoned pastures, and stately brick courthouses hauntingly silent in disuse--stark remnants all of the collective trials and traumas that have coalesced to forge such a complex cultural and aesthetic legacy here in the cradle of the genteel South. The debut work from Robert Persons, a Charleston, South Carolina magazine publisher turned director, the film churns and swells as a breathtakingly poetic meditation on the state of Georgia and its cultural, moral, and geographical birthright, rendered through rapt contemplation of obsolete territorial maps, architectural artifacts, lyrical narration, and exquisite landscape cinematography. Accompanied by swirling stringed flourishes and the low rumble of ritualized chanting, the first words from our guide billow up like a rising storm and testify “from a wilderness to a state, from unknown lands to chartered streets, deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road.” From this, Persons’ incredibly self-assured first effort takes a commanding grip and keeps hold through an elegant dialectic where dusty county roads and serene backwaters collide with clattering freight trains and the transgressions of Atlanta’s ever-creeping urban sprawl, to nearly overwhelming effect. The stoic intrigue of Georgia’s dormant sharecropping wastelands and skeletons of plantations has never been so gorgeously depicted, and indeed imposes a powerful language entirely its own. Likewise Persons’ mesmerizing verbal accompaniment explores the darkest elements of the South’s intercultural DNA and how the fingerprints of both great wretchedness and great triumphs have slowly faded, brought about by a combination of graciousness, willful ignorance, and, increasingly and perhaps most alarming, through the sort of cultural amnesia that the paving over of industrialization naturally catalyzes. General Orders No. 9 fittingly derives its title from the order of surrender issued by General Robert E. Lee to the Confederate Army in 1865, effectively ending the traumatic Civil War and serving as a critical point in the shaping (or more aptly re-shaping) of the nation. The profound treatise of the film, however, suggests that the residual trauma is still very much extant, and its catharsis is still a gradual work in progress. In synthesizing a panoply of imagery and iconography vital to reconciling the cultural and territorial identity of Georgia, and by proxy the entire American South, Persons traces a spellbinding genealogy that is both uniquely American and an unforgettably singular feat of cinematic poetry.

- Christopher Holmes

[avantwordfilms]

General Orders

So I was lamenting the fact this week that I've only managed to post six updates to this domain in almost four years time, and thought that it might be high time to start showcasing some of the intensive writing I've done for the RiverRun International Film Festival film guide over the last several installments of the festival.  This year marked my fifth festival as a programmer and as such I've now cranked out over 100 individual capsule write-ups of films selected for the festival lineup, nearly all of which I'm incredibly proud of and somewhat disappointed that they haven't had the opportunity for wider dissemination until now.  Our film guide is one of the painstaking endeavours that perennially separates RiverRun from the bulk of our regional festival cohorts in that we bust our collective asses to forge  incredibly rich, unique and thoughtful analyses of the films we've selected as a way of further crafting a festival personality and consciousness beyond the standard model of superficial press note re-hashing.  My plan is to finally release some of my favorite of these ditties into the wild, so to speak, as a means of generally communicating more with the world in an intelligent and constructive way.  Do not mistake them for reviews in earnest as that's not what we do as programmers...consider them rather as portals or pathways for guiding thinking about particular films prior to interacting with them.  The film guide is designed primarily as a tool for helping our audiences decide whether a work of cinema might appeal to one's particular aesthetic, political or rhetorical preferences, so don't expect blow-by-blow plot rundowns and don't scoff at the lack of scathing critique.  The fact that we selected each film for the festival lineup means that a filtering of any content we took issue with has already occurred. I thought it appropriate to begin this liquidation with what I believe was the first such writing I ever did for the festival back in 2010, for a film that was certainly one of the most challenging, formally daring documentaries we've ever programmed and has remained a favorite of mine ever since.  Doesn't hurt that my film guide capsule ended up being included in the press guide for the film, which was incredibly flattering. More to come!

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The resurrection

It lives! The Lost Colony, that is, not to mention yours truly.  As you can see this page has sort of flatlined since my last entry nearly two years ago, but I am very much alive and well and have been trying to breathe further life into this feature film endeavor all the while.  The lion's share of my time these last two years has been spent toiling away, working two jobs and 60-70 hour workweeks in order to methodically, painstakingly sock away enough capital to give this film a ghost of a chance at becoming a reality.  Forgoing anything that would even vaguely resemble a healthy social life or dietary regimen, I've managed between sheer hard work and a timely and generous grant from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to muster a halfway respectable production fund over these past 24 months.  Actors have been cast, crew personnel have been assembled, locations have been scouted, and we've even set September 13th as our projected date for commencement of production. This is not to say, however, that I'm working with a reasonable budget for the carrying out of a feature length motion picture.  Without some additional funding to help feed, lodge, transport and otherwise accommodate my merry band of players I am staring some additional, crippling debt in the face to get this thing through principal photography.  And that's where we could use your help.  Earlier this week we launched an Indiegogo fundraising campaign to attempt to scrape together an additional $10,000, and would be eternally grateful for any kind of support that  you might be willing to consider giving.  Even if it's just sharing or reposting, my internet footprint is fairly microscopic so tweeting or posting to Facebook about our campaign would be a most appreciated and  helpful gesture.  Likewise we're still searching for ways to beg, borrow, and steal for things like lighting kits, grip equipment, possible cheap/free places to stay along the Outer Banks, catering for cast and crew, etc. so would welcome any in-kind contributions of that sort as well.  The link to the campaign is posted below, so if you would please take a moment to check out the teaser video we've included about the project and vivid description of what we're trying to pull off that it contains.  Thanks so much for your support, and can't wait to share the film with you when I've finally willed it to completion! https://www.indiegogo.com/project/the-lost-colony/embedded

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Temperate malady

Summer seems to have just about flown by me now despite my foolhardy efforts of resistance--I can feel the slight chill of autumn gently descending and already the desperation of winged insects manifesting in manic stings and punctures.  And perhaps I should simply resign myself to it and welcome the drop in pressure.  It’s been a mercurial season in many, many ways...lots of dramatic swells and life changes but, well, character building I guess is sort of the prevailing cliché to subscribe to.  For those of you who fetishize hyphenated municipalities I’ve done you a great service and established residence in the city of Winston-Salem in recent weeks, which I can only assume will be a once-in-a-lifetime phenomena, but it’d be naive to rule out future dramatic relocations to a Wilkes-Barre, Sedro-Woolley, or even a Fuquay-Varina in a pinch.  North Carolina’s Twin City has treated me well thus far, and we’re far from estranged as I’ve worked here for the past two years programming for the RiverRun International Film Festival.  And now somehow I have ended up with my own personal piano, though I don’t play a lick and find the sound immodest and disquieting, but still, what’s not to like about that?

Some measured progress on The Lost Colony front as well--I was able to get away for several days in July and do some location scouts along the coast, and I’m feeling like I’ve found some outstanding locales to showcase when filming commences.  Likewise I’ve been talking with some folks casting-wise and am excited about developments there, hopefully more to divulge in the fall.  Also collaborating on some potential poster artwork that will help to draw interest in the film and just generally look charming on grant applications and fundraising materials, etc.  There’s a Kickstarter campaign in the works where you’ll  hopefully get a chance to check it out.  Details to come.

Lastly, I was flattered to learn that Sapsucker was included in a night of avian horror-themed films in a monthly screening series called MondoBaltimore back in July, which was headlined by the breathtaking “romantic thriller” Birdemic: Shock and Terror.  If you’re not familiar with the film’s virtuosity, please check out the trailer below.  Now, please.  Seriously.  Watch it now.

[avantwordfilms]

Resurfacing

So my life has been pretty well consumed these past few months by RiverRun, but I'm finally coming up for a little air as the festival wrapped this past Sunday.  It was an unforgettable ten days which put me in contact with dozens of really fantastic filmmakers, too many to name-drop here.  The highlight without question for me was getting to interview Oscar-nominated actor Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done) and outstanding director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter), both within the span of an hour.  I have a Rorschach-like silver smudge on my poster for My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done where Michael Shannon tried in vain to autograph it, only to be thwarted by a tapped out Sharpie.  Still a bit bummed out about that, but given time I think I can bounce back.  He was an extremely sweet and engaging guest and just happened to be here the day after he was cast as the villain Zod in the upcoming Superman reboot, so the video clip we posted of him speaking about the casting process got about 60,000 views on Youtube within the next 24 hours.  It was also reported all over the web, including MTV, Entertainment Weekly, IndieWire, and the Hollywood Reporter, and all of the articles mentioned RiverRun and Winston-Salem, which was a big deal for us.

In more personal affairs, Sapsucker played its few last venues on the film festival circuit (I suspect), showing at the Taos Shortz Film Festival on March 6 and then the DC Independent Film Festival on March 12.  I've also just learned that it will be playing in Greensboro sometime this summer as part of Tarheel Shorties, a short film program curated by the fine folk down at the Cucalorus Film Festival, where it played in 2009.  More details on that later.  I also found out two weeks ago that I've been awarded a $1,000 Regional Artist Grant through the United Arts Council of Greensboro, so I'm inching slowly toward getting The Lost Colony off the ground.  We'll see how things develop over the late spring and summer, and with any luck I'll be shooting later this year.  Knock on wood.  Anyway that's all for now, I'll be putting my traveling shoes on and doing some location scouting shortly now so we'll see what shakes out.