(Bad Fever opens in New York City at the reRun Gastropub beginning Friday, January 3, 2011. It world premiered at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival and is being distributed by Factory 25. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) For those viewers with a deep-seated fondness for the character-based New Hollywood dramas that were churned out in the 1970s, Dustin Guy Defa’s Bad Fever will feel like a welcome return to that glorious past (I should know, as I am guilty of said deep-seated fondness). From the spare opening title card—complete with a copyright tag at the bottom!—to its […]
by Michael Tully on Feb 2, 2012While director Joe Swanberg is in the midst of issuing his one-year, four-film DVD subscription series through Factory 25, he has uploaded a new film, Marriage Material, to Vimeo, where it can viewed free until the end of the month. From the Vimeo page a description of the film: Emily and Andrew, a young couple living in Memphis, agree to babysit their friend’s 6-month-old for a day. The experience causes them to examine their own relationship and their feelings about marriage and children. Marriage Material is shot by Adam Wingard, whose You’re Next opens later this year from LionsGate. It […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2012Memphis-based filmmaker Kentucker Audley (Team Picture, Open Five), selected for Filmmaker’s “25 New Faces” list in 2007, is releasing today online his new film, Holy Land (pictured here, with stars Bunny Lampert and Cole Weintraub), and with it a platform for fellow directors working in the no-budget trenches. The site is called “No Budge Films,” and it is described simply as “a place to watch no-budget films… Post your short film or feature // for a short run or indefinitely.” Why such a simple site? “Because most films don’t get distributed + it’s cool to give away your film for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 3, 2011Screening Times: Saturday March 12th, 5:30pm (Alamo Lamar C), Tuesday March 15th, 12:00pm (Alamo Ritz 1), Friday March 18th, 7:00pm (Alamo Lamar C) A couple of young, New York sophisticates travel upstate in order to research a book on sustainable farming, but when a working-class local woman becomes the object of their affection, jealousy and sexual gamesmanship threaten to ruin there relationship. Green, a new film from the team behind the recently opened Gabi on a Roof in July, marks the directorial debut of that film’s producer, editor and star, Sophia Takal. Filmmaker: You and many of your collaborators worked […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 12, 2011Screening Times: Friday March 11th, 8:45pm (Alamo Lamar B), Monday March 14th 4:00pm (Alamo Ritz 2), Thursday March 17th, 3:00pm, (Rollins Theatre) SXSW stalwarts Kentucker Audley and Eleonore Hendricks star in Bad Fever, the debut from Brooklyn-based newcomer Dustin Guy Defa about the wistful, misbegotten almost, but not quite love affair between a couple of drifters, one of whom seems to videotape everything she does with an antiquated video camera. Filmmaker: How did you first conceive of Bad Fever? Defa: I was in the middle of writing a different screenplay and working as a carousel operator. One night this couple […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 11, 2011In our Winter print edition, Alicia Van Couvering wrote five short case studies of films raising production financing in innovative ways. One was Kentucker Audley’s Open Five, and now the film is finished and premiering tonight as the Opening Film of the 13th Memphis Film Festival. In addition to premiering for the Memphis audience, the film will also be streaming free for a limited time at Audley’s site. (Loyal readers will also remember that Audley was one of our “25 New Faces” of 2007. From the press release: Open Five is described as a blend of “reality and fiction” and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2010Here’s how writer/director/producer Dustin Guy Defa describes his new film, Bad Fever: Bad Fever is a film about loneliness. It’s about being alone and hating being alone and then finding somebody to be with but hating that too because it doesn’t feel any different or at least any less lonely. Do you ever feel shitty and wonder why everyone thinks you’re okay, and then when you do finally feel good about yourself everyone else starts to ask what’s wrong with you? It’s about that too. It’s about Eddie, who lives with his mother, and it’s about all of his hopeless […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2010Named one of 2007’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Memphis writer-director Kentucker Audley‘s debut feature continues the mumblecore tradition of twentysomethings exploring life and love, but set out in the country where things are a little more laid back than the usual metropolitian mumblecore setting, Audley’s (who’s real name is Andrew Nenninger) tender tale of a young man on the cusp of adulthood is a loose, comedic look at a simple life that grows more complicated by the day. Also starring as the lead, Audley plays a young musician who spends his days writing songs while lounging in his […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 7, 2008