Amanda Rose Wilder
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“To Film Children in Ways You Don’t Usually See on Film”: Amanda Rose Wilder on Approaching the Elephant
A gripping, obsessively watchable observation of adolescent behavior set free, first time feature filmmaker Amanda Rose Wilder’s Approaching the Elephant finds its inspiration in the inaugural semester of New Jersey’s Teddy McArdle Free School. Following co-founder Alex Khost, a wide-eyed, determined optimist who dreams of (and gets his chance to) run a not-entirely-anarchistic Free School, the film immerses itself amongst the young children experiencing a drastically unfamiliar educational environment. Neither polemical condemnation nor evidence of its success, Wilder’s camera observes the “experiment’s” highs and lows, as school rules/punishments are democratically voted on by the students. Lovingly photographed (post-converted to black-and-white) and framed in the […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 19, 2015 -
True/False Diary 1: Approaching The Elephant, Demonstration, Sacro GRA
Halfway through, it’s too early to take the overall temperature of True/False 2014 in its 11th year (my fifth attending, each year with the hotel paid; full disclosure). All smooth so far, though it’s early going, so let’s forego atmospherics at this point and jump into one of the festival’s world premieres, Approaching The Elephant. (“Thanks for everyone being here for basically the highlight of my life,” director Amanda Rose Wilder said in her introduction.) The subject is “free schools”: further left on the continuum than Montessori, and (at least as practiced by the subject school’s founder Alex Khost) an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 1, 2014 -
True/False: A Place for World Premieres?
Despite its stated policy about not announcing a film’s premiere status, is the True/False Film Fest the new place to launch your documentary? In part one of a three part series, filmmaker and writer Robert Greene will chronicle the fortunes of five films that will world premiere at the 2014 True/False Film Festival, including his own, Actress. No film festival has meant more to me than True/False. My last two films (Kati with an I and Fake It So Real) began their lives in Columbia, MO — in front of the festival’s famously engaged crowds, amidst its street parades and […]
by Robert Greene on Feb 25, 2014
