Sundance 2009: Frontier
Where Is Where by Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Artist Spotlight: The Works of Maria Marshall / U.S. (Director: Maria Marshall)
Maria Marshall's disturbing and gorgeously composed video projections provoke the psychological dimensions of cinema. Often violent and always visually charming, Marshall often uses her two sons in the main roles of her films. Her work tackles fundamental subjects of motherhood, socialization and life experience and takes us back to the world of childhood as a pretext in order to evoke the anxiety of adults.
Lunch Break/Exit / U.S. (Director: Sharon Lockhart)
"Lunch Break" and "Exit" yield from Sharon Lockhart's timely new film and photographic series about the bleak state of U.S. labor. "Lunch Break," a single tracking shot through a long corridor where workers take their lunch hour at the massive shipyard Bath Iron Works in Maine, reveals how 42 workers spend their lunch break. In "Exit," the frame constantly fills with teeming workers each day as they head for home after a long day's work.
O'er the Land / U.S. (Director: Deborah Stratman)
A meditation on our national psyche and the milieu of elevated threat, the film addresses gun culture, national identity, wilderness, consumption, patriotism and the possibility of personal transcendence.
Stay the Same Never Change / U.S. (Director-screenwriter: Laurel Nakadate)
A mix of visual fact and narrative fiction starring a group of amateur actors in Kansas City, Mo. Whether it's a family man looking for beauty or a young woman obsessed with polar bears and Oprah, the characters in this humorous film reveal quiet lives full of sadness and desire. Cast: Dirk Cowan, Julie Potratz, Emily Boullear, Cyan Meeks, Tate Buck. World premiere
Where Is Where? (Director: Eija-Liisa Ahtila)
An experimental, four-channel film based on an incident that happened during the struggle for independence in Algeria. As a reaction to the acts of violence committed by the French, two young Algerian boys murder their friend, a French boy of the same age. The film starts from the present, when the Death enters the house of a poet who is attempting to write about the incident. World premiere
You Won't Miss Me / U.S. (Director: Ry Russo-Young)
A portrait of a modern rebel, Shelly Brown, a 23-year-old alienated urban misfit recently released from a psychiatric hospital. Cast: Stella Schnabel, Rene Ricard. World premiere