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Horror, S&MAN posits, is a specific pleasure: the more we suffer watching it, the better. We want horror movies to hurt us. S&MAN explores and exercises that idea, asking why we are compelled to watch, and more than that, why we like it. JT Petty, a filmmaker responsible for his own underground horror films, tracks down and interviews a forensic psychologist, a horror scholar, a sexologist, actors, and most importantly the underground and extreme filmmakers themselves who describe for us the connections between voyeurism, culture, and sadistic watching. Filmmakers who choose horror as their specialty are by their nature unreliable narrators; indeed some of the subjects are, if not outright liars, intent on blurring the line between themselves and the movies they make. With S&MAN, boundaries are crossed between filmmaker and subject, witness and participant, reality and fiction.
Primary contact:
Christine Richardson, christine@jeremywalker.com
Download Press Notes
Friday, March 10th
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11:59pm
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Alamo S. Lamar 1
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Tuesday, March 14th
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11:59pm
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Alamo Downtown
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Wednesday March 15th
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7:15pm
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Alamo Downtown
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Director JT Petty will be at the Festival from March 10th-15th.
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Ethnography on a grand cinematic canvas, DARKON is an 84-minute exploration of an unusual group of weekend "warrior knights," fantasy role-playing gamers whose live-action battleground is modern-day suburban Baltimore re-imagined as a medieval world called Darkon. Directors Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer put three years into the project, first gaining the trust and access they needed from their subjects, then tackling their "in-character" fantasy world with the epic vocabulary we've come to expect from movies about Knights in Shining Armor: aerial and crane shots, history-making battle sequences, and a rousing original score. In character, the people we meet are powerful leaders who participate in an emotionally rich social hierarchy; but we also see how easily "real life" gets in the way, and learn what drove them to become so involved in the fantasy world of Darkon in the first place. While maintaining an essential and clinical distance, DARKON at the same time enters the subjective imaginations of its participants and celebrates the inner-workings of a culture that lies just beneath the surface of everyday American life.
It would be easy to dismiss Jay Floyd's feature comedy FORGIVING THE FRANKLINS as a lampoon of Southern Evangelical Christianity - except for the fact that it is Jesus Christ's superior knowledge of the human condition that guides the film's narrative. And what a juicy narrative it is. The Franklins are a typical North Carolina family: Frank is a lawyer, Betty is a homemaker, and the High School-age kids, Caroline and Brian, are a cheerleader and a football star. An auto accident turns the The Franklins' world upside down: in a state somewhere between life and death Frank, Betty and Brian meet Christ who, for reasons known only to him, remove from them the burden of Original Sin. Left out of the equation is Caroline who, in the throes of adolescence and real bodily pain, must figure out why her family has suddenly and ravenously embraced their repressed sexuality. FORGIVING THE FRANKLINS will surely upset some, while adventurous and gay audiences will find characters and situations with whom they can identify. Whatever side you're on, once you see this movie you'll never look at ice cubes and apple pie the same way again.
