Detropia, DIRECTOR Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady U.S.A., 2011, 90 min, color
From the scores of films shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (January 19-29, 2012 in Park City, Utah), only a few end up getting wider distribution; the rest recede into obscurity in Indie film houses. A few of the interesting art films worth looking out for are singled out here:
Directed by New York-based documentary filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Detropia – describes Detroit’s boom and bust history; the hemorrhaging decay and eventual collapse of its auto industry. “With its vivid, painterly palette and haunting score, DETROPIA sculpts a dreamlike collage of a grand city teetering on the brink of dissolution.” The film documents buildings being demolished as Detroit’s economic prospects fade, wages plummet and tourists ogle at the “charming decay.”
THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, DIRECTOR Ho Tzu Nyen Singapore, 30 min, color
Ho Tzu Nyen’s, The Cloud of Unknowing is an art installation and film, originally shown at the 54th Venice Biennale as part of the Singapore pavillion. The video and sound installation examines clouds as symbolizing transience and emptiness. “On a screen, a narrative unfolds, set in a public housing complex in Singapore, where eight characters in eight apartments individually encounter a cloud, embodied both as a figure and a vaporous mist.”
Excision, DIRECTOR Richard Bates Jr. SCREENWRITER Richard Bates Jr. U.S.A., 2011, 81 min, color
Directed by Richard Bates Jr. Excision blends elements of horror, teen comedy, and cult classics with great performances by Traci Lords and John Waters. Pauline the main character has a penchant for picking scabs, dissecting road kill, and fantasizing about performing surgery on strangers…
Excision, DIRECTOR Richard Bates Jr. SCREENWRITER Richard Bates Jr. U.S.A., 2011, 81 min, color
Denis Côté's Bestiaire DIRECTOR Denis Côté Canada/France, 2011, 72 min, color
Bestiaries were compendiums of exotic beasts that were popular in medieval times. Denis Côté’s Bestiaire depicts buffalo, hyenas, zookeepers, zebras, taxidermists, rhinos, and ostriches within beautifully composed frames of a locked-off camera. “Whether we anthropomorphize, poeticize, abstract, or judge them is up to us. Côté invites his audience to reflect on control and power as lions rattle cages, a taxidermist recreates a duck, and artists copy a stuffed deer. Using the film form to challenge the very notion of representation, Bestiaire is an elegant, bewitching meditation on the nature of sentience and the boundaries between nature and civilization.”
Other notable films include, Slow Derek, directed by Dan Ojari “The tale of Derek, an office worker, as he struggles with the true speed of planet Earth;” Marina Abramović’s The Artist is Present, and Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s Shut Up and Play the Hits, a concert film on LCD Soundsystem.
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DETROPIA
CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
EXCISION
