 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
spine |
title | director | year |
 1 |
LOL From acclaimed auteur Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs), LOL is a raw, witty, and painfully intimate look at modern sexuality and the technology that either helps us click or turns us off. Struggling to balance their online obsessions with the demands of real life, Alex, Chris and Tim are unable to decipher the mixed messages that everyday tools of communication offer. Are they alienating their chances for love by viewing women through computer screens and cameraphones? Filmed with documentary-like realism and featuring a brilliantly eclectic soundtrack, LOL's defiantly un-Hollywood approach pulls no punches in its up-to-the-second relevance and honesty. |
Joe Swanberg | 2006 |
 2 |
Quiet City + Dance Party, USA Praised for his contemplative lyricism and character-driven authenticity, writer-director Aaron Katz now stands at the vanguard of American cinema's new wave of forward-thinking independents. In his deceptively simple Quiet City, twentysomething Jamie arrives in New York and meets a kindly stranger named Charlie. An unlikely connection is formed over the next 24 hours through city parks, abandoned apartments, and art galleries throughout industrial Brooklyn. Achingly sincere and shot with a painterly eye, Katz's approach is refreshingly devoid of romantic clichés. Also included on this 2-DVD set: Katz's impressionistic and tenderly heartbreaking debut, Dance Party, USA—hailed as "one of the best films of the year" (The New York Sun). |
Aaron Katz | 2007 |
 3 |
The Guatemalan Handshake One of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, writer-director Todd Rohal charts strange new cinematic waters with his madly innovative feature debut, The Guatemalan Handshake. Winner of Special Jury Prizes at Slamdance and Torino, Rohal's vivacious feast for the senses "bristles with his anarchic visual language, offbeat humor, ephemeral sense of narrative, circuitous character sketches, and freewheeling sense of mirth" (Baltimore City Paper). |
Todd Rohal | 2007 |