The Hottest August
-
True/False 2019: Anxiety and Research Projects
The sound of ocean waves links the first two images of Dora García’s Segunda Vez: a crowd of people, standing and watching something unseen in interior darkness, then an ocean cliffside—a “reverse shot” of a totally different space. The waves dissolve into room tone as the third shot cuts to a young man and woman silently regarding each other in a waiting room, then an elderly hand firmly gripping a cane and, finally, an enormous wall clock. None of these seem to share a common space or time; I assumed all would be clarified sooner or later and didn’t worry about it […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 27, 2019 -
“I’m Really Interested in Expanding What We Call ‘Political Cinema'”: Brett Story on The Hottest August
Where Brett Story’s previous feature, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, interrogated the US’s carceral system in twelve formally and thematically distinct segments, her new film The Hottest August approaches climate change, in its broadest sense, through a freeflowing diaristic chronicle of a summer month. Over August of 2017, Story and her crew traveled to all five boroughs of NYC, capturing a broad polyphony of voices that, pleasingly, refuses to stay strictly on-thematic-task. The film just premiered at True/False before proceeding to SXSW; the first screening there is today. Over FaceTime Audio, I spoke to Story about working with a small crew, redefining […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 8, 2019
