Approaching the Elephant
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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 -
The Terror of Free-Fall: A Filmmaker’s Experience at POV Hackathon 4
When making a documentary the following question tends to arise: what should happen to those extra 238.5 hours of material? After a 90-minute (give or take) cut is locked, what does one do with the pile left on the floor? Do you pick up five or so scenes you’re particularly fond of and put them on a DVD as “extras”? What if you grabbed — or carefully selected, depending on your level of intensity of need to control — a handful of material and constructed an interactive online video explorer or choose-your-own-adventure, allowing people to navigate as they wish, depending […]
by Amanda Wilder on Aug 2, 2013
