SXSW
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“On Our First day It Was 100°, and It Basically Went Up From There”: Writer/Director Shannon Triplett On Her SXSW-Premiering Psychological Thriller, Desert Road
A woman, a car, a gas station and a factory — from this minimalist set of locations Shannon Triplett has crafted a surprising work of supernatural suspense in her writing and directing debut, Desert Road, which premiered this weekend at the SXSW Film Festival. Kristine Froseth is the woman, a 20-something would-be professional photographer on a solo trip. When her car’s tire blows out on the ribbon-like highway, she’s momentarily dazed before coming to and walking back to that gas station to call for help. In a chilling and quickly rendered series of events, she realizes that help is not […]
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“Klee Wanted to Destroy the Convention of Angels in Their Historic Tradition”: Ken August Meyer on His SXSW Doc about Art and Illness, Angel Applicant
There’s the concept of art as therapy, and then there’s the concept of a specific artist as a therapist, which is how debuting filmmaker Ken August Meyer introduces the Swiss-German painter Paul Klee at the start of his Angel Applicant, premiering today in the SXSW Documentary Feature Competition. At the beginning of the 21st century, Meyer, an art director at Wieden+Kennedy, is struck by systemic scleroderma, a life-threatening autoimmune disease that causes scarring and tightening of the skin and which can damage internal organs. As he embarks on a treatment path, Meyer finds solace as well as a kind of […]
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“…The Costs of Turning Yourself from a Three-Dimensional Person into a Two-Dimensional Brand”: Miranda Yousef on Her SXSW-Premiering doc Art for Everybody
One of the most surprising revelations about the painter (and multimillion-dollar mass marketer) Thomas Kinkade, “the most successful artist of his time” according to the synopsis for Miranda Yousef’s SXSW-premiering doc Art for Everybody, is not that he was, well, “the most successful artist of his time.” Nor that after his death a decade ago from a drug and alcohol overdose his family discovered a secret trove of rather dark and sometimes disturbing work, images at complete odds with the sugary sweet depictions of small-town life that once graced the walls of the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery franchises, a ubiquitous presence […]
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“How Do You Talk About It as a Murder When You Think It’s an Accident?” Citizen Sleuth Director Chris Kasick on His SXSW-Premiering Mile Marker 181 Doc
In the nine years since Serial, the “true crime podcaster” has become, variously, a career goal, sociological type and, in TV shows like Only Murders in the Building, object of satire. In Citizen Sleuth, world premiering in SXSW’s Documentary Spotlight section, debuting director Chris Kasick considers his voluble, no-filter subject—Emily Nestor of the Mile Marker 181 podcast—from all of these angles while also producing a work that is something of a moral reckoning for the popular audio genre. In 2011, Jaleayah Davis, a 20-year old Ohio woman, died in a horrible drunk-driving accident, her head severed from her body. Or […]
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“I Like the Idea of Comedy in an Uninhabitable Place”: Director Calvin Lee Reeder on His SXSW-Premiering TV Pilot, Harbor Island
“Like an Abel Ferrara Jr., [Calvin Lee] Reeder meshes thought and design with genre storylines, like a Euro-filmmaker making ’70s drive-in films,” wrote Mike Plante in his 2007 25 New Face profile of the Portland, Ore.-born filmmaker. Sixteen-years later, the alt-horror auteur is still moving between the border spaces of various horror and science-fiction sub-genres, with his newest work — the SXSW-premiering independent TV pilot Harbor Island — being one of the most existentially offbeat yet. The festival’s program book provides the narrative gist but not the work’s extremely odd affect, which is something like watching Rupert Pupkin act in […]
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“The Inspiration To Donate a Kidney Was Not a ‘Project’ To Begin With”: Penny Lane on Confessions of a Good Samaritan
The drive to donate a kidney to a stranger is not a desire I—nor the majority of the population, for that matter—can relate to. (But then again I’ve personally no great love for humanity in general, as arguably the planet would be far better off had we gone the way of the dinosaurs. And luckily for Mother Earth, we still may!) Which puts me at philosophical odds with veteran filmmaker (and main protagonist) Penny Lane, whose latest doc Confessions of a Good Samaritan is a deep dive into the science as well as ethical implications behind altruistic donation. It’s also a […]
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“… A Means of Creating a Fulfilling Life, Rather Than Just About Creating a Film”: Morrisa Maltz on Her Lily Gladstone-Starring The Unknown Country
This interview with the director of the recommended The Unknown Country was originally posted during the 2022 SXSW Film Festival and is being reposted today as the film opens in New York, Los Angeles and other markets via Music Box Films. — Editor From the plains of the Dakotas to the Mexican-American border, landscape — seen through rain-streaked windshields at night, from overhead drone shots, and from the point-of-view of a single woman moving across a country that’s both reassuring and suddenly alien — is both subject and setting in The Unknown Country, the debut dramatic feature from artist and […]
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Ambition in Filmmaking, Mia Goth’s Dual Role and His Sirkian A24 Prequel: Ti West on His SXSW-Premiering X
After 2016’s Western, In the Valley of Violence, and several years directing episodic TV, Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Inkeepers, The Sacrament) makes a very welcome return to the world of feature horror with X, a ’70s-set picture in which the sort of ambition that has characterized West’s impressive filmography is both evident on screen as well as the subtext driving the film’s characters. The set-up: a ragtag group of filmmakers ensconce themselves in a rented barn outside a foreboding farmhouse straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to make a porno feature, The Farmer’s Daughter. Mia […]
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Five Questions for Drea Cooper and Zachary Canepari About Their SXSW-Premiering Documentary, Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets
As more and more human activity — personal, social, economic, political — happens online, a challenge is posed to practitioners of that legacy art form, the feature film. To wit: how to tell an 80-minute-plus story whose symbolic meanings were created in part by interactions and juxtapositions occurring in virtual spaces, a story that’s possibly inseparable from a rich visual culture that is most accurately parsed in portrait mode and not in a theater or on a flat screen? Providing one answer are filmmakers Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari, whose latest feature documentary, the SXSW-premiering Diamond Hands: The Legend of […]
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“It’s About the Emotion, the Performance, the Rhythm and the Space in Between the Words”: Rosa Ruth Boesten on Her SXSW-Debuting doc Master of Light
A stunning work of cinematic nonfiction, Rosa Ruth Boesten’s Master of Light follows the classical painter George Anthony Morton, a fan of Rembrandt who conjures exquisite portraits of his own family members in the style of the Old Masters. Never formally trained, Morton nonetheless managed to land a spot at the New York branch of The Florence Academy of Art, eventually going on to study in Europe and win awards abroad. Which would be a remarkable feat for any American, let alone a Black man from Kansas City who spent a decade behind bars for dealing drugs. But likewise remarkable […]
