Kate Lyn Sheil
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The Next Day: Writer/Director Amy Seimetz and Actress Kate Sheil on the Eerie, Darkly Comic Anxiety Dream of She Dies Tomorrow
“It’s so great that you own a house,” biologist Jane (Jane Adams) says to sister Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) by phone early in Amy Seimetz’s trippy drama of psychological contagion, She Dies Tomorrow. “This is the best thing you could have done.” Amy has only just moved in, boxes are everywhere, but a new L.A. mortgage hasn’t quelled whatever demons have pushed her to a tremulous and despairing state—Jane can hear it in her voice. “I’ll come over,” Jane says. “Don’t do anything you might regret. Go for a walk. Or why don’t you try watching a movie?” “A movie’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2020 -
Separation Anxiety: Men Go to Battle
The lives of the young, illiterate Mellon brothers, Henry (Tim Morton) and Francis (David Maloney), whose world barely extends beyond their small, unproductive farm in Small’s Corner, Kentucky, might seem historically insignificant compared to the monumental events transpiring in their own backyard in 1861. The magic — I use the word loosely because the film is cloaked in such an original isomorph of naturalism — of director Zachary Treitz’s Men Go to Battle lies in its equal treatment of the two strands. The filmmaker tailors the aesthetic to his purposes, noting with a hint of sarcasm to The L Magazine, […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jul 8, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Zachary Treitz and Kate Lyn Sheil’s Independent Civil War Drama, Men Go to Battle
Written by Zachary Treitz and Kate Lyn Sheil, and directed by Treitz, Men Go to Battle is an ambitious independent historical drama that tells the story of two quarreling brothers whose back-and-forth are interrupted by the Civil War. Here’s how the filmmakers synopsize the film, which stars Tim Morton, David Maloney and, from Spring Breakers, Rachel Korine: While most Americans predict that the Civil War will end by Christmas, Henry (Tim Morton) and Francis Mellon (David Maloney) are more concerned about braving another winter on their struggling rural Kentucky farm. The brothers have become suffocatingly close. Francis’ practical jokes become […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2016 -
“Crazy Women, the News, Florida, Guns”: Robert Greene on Kate Plays Christine
To lean on my Sundance write-up to summarize Kate Plays Christine: “Sarasota TV journalist Christine Chubbuck shot herself live on-air in 1974 and died 14 hours later. The suicide footage exists on one two-inch tape, which is inaccessibly locked up in the vault of the former president of the Florida station (now part of ABC) Chubbuck worked at, so there are shades of Grizzly Man in Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine. The premise is that Kate Lyn Sheil’s preparing to play Chubbuck in a movie that will conclude with a recreation of the suicide, and the climactic question is whether the actress can go through with it. Scenes from this ostensible […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 26, 2016 -
“The Original Pitch Couldn’t Be Said in Less than a Thousand Words”: Robert Greene and Kate Lyn Sheil on Kate Plays Christine
After winning the Special Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance, filmmaker Robert Greene and actress Kate Lyn Sheil arrived in Berlin for their international premiere of Kate Plays Christine. Of the 44 titles slated in Berlinale’s Forum, Greene’s documentary is one of only three American films to have been selected to screen. The film is described as a documentary, but the nature of the project has a complicated and multi-layered explanation. On one level, the film follows Kate preparing for a role, but the character she must assume isn’t written in a script. She’s researching to play […]
by Taylor Hess on Mar 3, 2016 -
Seeking Arrangements: Lodge Kerrigan, Amy Seimetz and Steven Soderbergh on The Girlfriend Experience
Shot in New York City during the 2008 financial crisis, Steven Soderbergh’s feature The Girlfriend Experience was a cool movie about a hot topic. Ostensibly about a “new” kind of prostitution, where escorts would simulate the casual intimacy of a real relationship, it starred real-life porn star Sasha Grey even as it contained virtually no sex. But what began as a look at how the Internet enabled a new kind of solo entrepreneur sex worker — “As we were making the film, I didn’t consider [prostitution] as a metaphor for anything,“ Soderbergh said then — wound up a trenchantly austere […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2016 -
Five Questions with Men Go To Battle Director/Co-Writer Zachary Treitz and Co-Writer Kate Lyn Sheil
Hats off to director Zachary Treitz and co-writer Kate Lyn Sheil for sidestepping the more introspective, resource heavy trends of much contemporary independent filmmaking, and swinging for the fences with their Civil War period piece, Men Go To Battle. Set in 1861 Kentucky, the brothers Francis and Henry Mellon (Tim Morton and David Maloney) are desperate to scare up some funds for their overgrown farm before winter arrives, but the pair’s constant quarreling is a hindrance to much progress. Eventually fed up with Francis’ heavy drinking and general flippancy, Henry takes off to join a far more populated battle amidst the Confederate army. […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 17, 2015 -
The Tyranny of Interconnection: Two SXSW Films Tackle the Social Technology Present/Future
In a half empty hotel ballroom in Austin last week, Brian Schuster — a porn entrepreneur giving a lecture on the future of the adult industry — introduced the concept of “the social singularity,” the idea that the difference between our networked relationships and our IRL ones will eventually become indistinguishable. With texts, tweets, Skype, and FaceTime, we’re already getting pretty close to that futuristic premise, something a lot of films still struggle to incorporate into their storytelling. But two of the best films this year at SXSW, Ben Dickinson’s Creative Control and Eugene Kotlyarenko’s A Wonderful Cloud, updated familiar […]
by Whitney Mallett on Mar 26, 2015 -
“We Live in an Attention Economy”: Eugene Kotlyarenko on A Wonderful Cloud
Within two minutes of talking to Eugene Kotlyarenko, separated in physical distance by about a mile, yet connected by phone via his marketing company’s office thousands of miles away in New York, we are discussing near-fatal car crashes and how a life-threatening experience can make a few seconds can feel like an eternity. Kotlyarenko was shooting an Interpol music video recently (he starred as the “sleazy guy” in a behind-the-scenes of a porn shoot). On the way home, his car spun out on a cloverleaf freeway entrance. “I literally felt like I was stuck in a time vortex,” he says. […]
by Tina Poppy on Mar 13, 2015 -
Parting Shot
When it came time for writer/director Zachary Wigon to cast the mysterious heartbreaker of his cyber-age romantic thriller The Heart Machine, he immediately looked not to one of the current crop of chirpy uptalkers but to an actress who has brought an unusual gravity and intensity to several distinguished recent independent films, Kate Lyn Sheil. In Wigon’s picture, Sheil is the IP address-obscured object of desire, playing a geolocational game of hide-and-seek with a hipster Harry Caul, played by John Gallagher Jr. Of whether the film’s virtual romance (the couple fall for each other via Skype) is “real,” she told […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014
