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September 23, 2009

Fall Program Notes

One year ago this weekend, a handful of us stole away to our hotel in Birmingham, Alabama to watch the first Presidential Debate. Later, Kris Swanberg and I stayed in that room and ordered room service french fries and ate the hell out of them. We were at the beloved Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, which begins again this weekend and which will be showing St. Nick on Sunday. After two consecutive years with shorts in the film festival, it's something of a warm, cozy triumph to be showing my first feature there. I also served as a judge on their screenplay competition, but the less said about that, the better.

Exactly three weeks later, the film will also be screening at the Indie Memphis festival, which has just announced its own stellar lineup. I completely fell in love with Memphis during the two weeks I spent there last month, and I can't wait to go back. I love the program notes for this one:

Two runaway children take refuge in an old clapboard house, their youthful curiosity and mischievousness succumbing to focused movement and the necessity of survival. The story is one not so much of innocence lost as of independence gained as the brother and sister forage and scrape to get by, setting up housekeeping -- including building a fort of sheets in the abandoned house -- as kids will do to feel safe. Director David Lowery weaves a narrative less from dialogue than from nail-studded planks, shards of glass, iron pipeworks and fragments of maps. There is a post-apocalyptic sense to ST. NICK, though we're uncertain of the particular apocalypse, save for the hint of an implosion in the nuclear family. It is a film that seems borne of still photography with the stark images of abandonment and emptiness giving way to the plot of a coming Texas winter, impending adult interference and youthful defiance.

So come join us on this sojourn into the South! See the film, spread the word, come say hello, offer us mint julips. Or if you're more Northbound, perhaps you can venture out to the Calgary Film Festival, where we'll be screening this coming Tuesday, September 29th in a rare late evening slot. 9:30pm! That's a new record.

Posted by David Lowery at September 23, 2009 1:52 AM