Laurin-Federlein | SpoutBlog

Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness: Your Last Chance

By Karina Longworth posted 7 months ago

Last week, I posted about Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness, Laurin Federlein’s highly-improvised, Hi8-sourced, sorta-doc/sorta-musical, which wraps up its one week run at the Anthology Film Archive here in New York tonight. That afternoon, I got a Facebook message from someone associated with the film, urging me *not* to go see it. I don’t know whether or not he was being facetious, but in any event, I didn’t listen. I went last night, saw it in an empty theater, and I think it was the most satisfying movie experience I’ve had in 2008 thus far.

This is the kind of balls-out, so independent it’s essentially handmade work of art that’s notable missing from festivals like Sundance. It’s an amazingly beautiful (the totally unstable, borderline psychedelic look of the blown-up video isn’t going to work for everyone, but it works for me like crazy) story about the extremes we go to in the name of combating loneliness. And, just as a hidden-camera comedy, it’s way funnier than Borat.

I don’t know if I can be rational about Build a Ship right now––it was that mind-blowing of an experience, and I may go see it again tonight and then write something more in-depth––but I wanted to post something this morning to encourage anyone who has the means to try to catch the film’s final screening at Anthology tonight. I can’t bear the thought that something like this is playing to a virtually empty house.

For screening information, go here.

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Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness in NY

By Karina Longworth posted 7 months ago

A low budget musical, highly improvised, shot on consumer video and blown up to film? I’m there. I’ve been wanting to see Laurin Federlein’s Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness since reading write-ups of its premiere at Rotterdam a year ago, followed by a number of conflicted but non necessarily dismissive reviews from LAFF. I’m so excited that it’s finally coming to New York tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt of the synopsis from Anthology Film Archives’ calendar:

An absurdist musical travelogue, BUILD A SHIP follows young solitary Vincent as he rides on his moped through a deserted Scottish mountain region. His mission: to “heal the loneliness” of the few scattered inhabitants by introducing a mobile disco to the area. Driven by messianic determination and an addiction to petrol fumes, he struggles to keep his disintegrating vision afloat amidst the hostile landscape and stubborn indifference of the locals.
Conceived around the idiosyncratically witty and eloquent persona of lead-actor and collaborator Magnus Aronson, whose heartbreakingly poignant pop songs punctuate the low-key proceedings, BUILD A SHIP is based on many hours of conversations between Aronson’s Vincent and the real-life residents of the area and was filmed using two consumer Hi8 video camcorders, resulting in an intentionally low-fi, grungy look that corresponds to Vincent’s defiant struggle: to erect a vision of perfection, glamour, and aesthetic refinement within the imperfections and dullness of everyday reality.

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Indies