As SXSW 2009 approaches we’ll be asking filmmakers to spill the superficial details about their films, to tell us all the deep personal details of what makes them tick, and –– new this year! –– reveal who they had to sleep with, in the incestuous conspiracy-minded secret society that is the wider SXSW community, in order to get their film programmed at the festival.
Today we take a look at Jocelyn Cammack’s Emerging Visions documentary The Time of Their Lives. Previously screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest, the film follows three female activists –– ages 88 to 102 –– living together in a home for active elderly adults. Watch the trailer above, and read Jocelyn’s answers to The 5 Questions We Ask Everyone below.
Welcome to the first in our second annual series of SXSW previews! As the festival approaches we’ll be asking filmmakers to spill the superficial details about their films, to tell us all the deep personal details of what makes them tick, and –– new this year! –– reveal who they had to sleep with, in the incestuous conspiracy-minded secret society that is the wider SXSW community, in order to get their film programmed at the festival.
Chosen as our first preview simply because I very much support the naming films after Flock of Seagulls songs, Modern Love is Automatic is the debut directorial effort from Zach Clark, who edited SXSW 2006 entry Dance Party, USA. Above, check out the stylish, winky trailer for the movie. Below the jump, Clark describes his Emerging Visions entry as a “a No-Wave Douglas Sirk movie”, professes his love for salsa and “Three’s Company style misunderstandings”, and drops the name of a Bollywood-related work-out video that I feel I must purchase immediately.
Welcome to the first of many posts that we’ll be doing over the next couple of weeks, previewing upcoming SXSW premieres and profiling their makers. I’m so excited to start this plug fest with the work of a good friend of Spout, Mary Bronstein’s Yeast. Mary is featured in the webseries Butterknife, and she also starred in her husband Ronnie Bronstein’s debut feature, Frownland (which, incidentally, will be running for a week at the IFC Center in New York concurrent with Yeast’s debut in Austin).
Mary stars again in Yeast, alongside Greta Gerwig (Hannah Takes the Stairs), and together they explore friendships that are, according to the SXSW synopsis, “Ebola-infested, maggot-filled and bursting at the seams.” You can watch the trailer for Yeast above. Below, check out Mary’s answers to the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody (heretofore known as the 4QWAE). Yeast, which is screening in the Narrative Competition at SXSW, premieres at 7pm on Monday, March 10 at the Alamo Ritz; for more information, go here.
Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.
“It’s like Laverne and Shirley meets Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May…on PCP!!”
Sorry…here’s the real 25 word-or-less: Yeast is a film about a maddeningly oblivious, tyrannical and stunted young woman trying to negotiate two toxic friendships.
Something that the synopsis doesn’t say is that Yeast turned out to be a lot funnier than I had originally anticipated. Another thing to know is that it isn’t a study in realism, or the way people “really” behave. It is more hyper-realism. We were interested in telling the story from the inside-out. Showing on the outside what the character is feeling on the outside. I find this more interesting than dialog about how characters feel. For example, sometimes you may be so frustrated at someone you wish you could just hit that person in the face. In real life you don’t, but you might say “You know, you are like, kind of being a little bit annoying right now.” In this movie you would actually hit the person.
I decided to make this film after I realized that I didn’t want to wait around for other people to make projects. I wanted to make a film about female friendships that dealt with the issues of resentment, hostility and emotional manipulation that often are present in too-close enmeshed friendships of either sex. I wanted to make a film about women that I’ve never seen before, about people who have no business being friends with each other but don’t know how to stop. And I wanted to see if I could pull it off.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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