* SPECIAL EVENT AT THE MUSIC BOX THEATRE *
Presented as part of the DOCS AT THE BOX Documentary Series
GUIDELINES (2014, DCP, 76 minutes)
Preceded by EVERY SPEED (2012, HD video and animation, 12 min)
Chicago-based director Julia Fuller in attendance will be in attendance for a post screening discussion with the audience.
GUIDELINES explores the world of adolescence through a series of tableaux that illustrate the occasionally trying existence of young people at a rural secondary school. Emphasizing the contrasts between the regulated environment of the classroom and the beckoning freedom of the great outdoors, the film is structured around the teens’ meetings with various authority figures in the institution whose job it is to “set them straight.” During these encounters behind closed doors, the students’ day-to-day concerns emerge through the diversity of the stories they tell. Outside classroom hours, the students regain control of their world, the natural surroundings becoming a playground where they can test the limits of their temporary freedom. The documentary gradually sheds light on the interior drama of adolescence, with its shifts from fragility to reckless abandon. Relying mostly on uninterrupted long takes in order to record situations and emotions as faithfully as possible, the film makes a point of not criticizing either the education system or the youths’ behaviour. A work of patient observation, Guidelines paints a universal portrait of the ups and downs of the teen years.
EVERY SPEED is a short experimental documentary that looks at the meaning of movement for people with and without physical disabilities – both in terms of design and accessibility of cities and transportation as well as personal experiences of movement – in the context of a culture that places value on independence, speed, and physical ability. Through the conceptual devices of the animation and the voiceover interviews – which do not reveal the faces of the interview subjects – Every Speed removes the focus from individuals, some of whom may be accustomed to people staring at their physical disabilities, and increases awareness of the unifying experience of dependence when it comes to traveling around a city.
Jean-François Caissy, born in the village of Carleton-sur-Mer in Quebec, is an independent filmmaker and visual artist. His first documentary was 2005’s critically acclaimed La saison des amours. As an artist-in-residence for Les Films de L’Autre, he next directed La belle visite (2009), the first of his films to earn him international attention. It had its world premiere at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival, won Best Documentary at FICFA and was selected for numerous festivals around the world, including the BFI London Film Festival, Visions du Réel and Hot Docs. Trained as a photographer, Caissy is also a visual arts practitioner, and has had several gallery showings of his work. More recently, his video installation Derby was shown at the Centre Clark in Montreal and at Galerie Espace F in Matane, Quebec.
Julia Fuller is a filmmaker and photographer from Oakland, California who studied cognitive psychology and theatrical lighting design at Barnard College and has an MFA from Temple University. Her two experimental documentaries, Illness Magnified and Every Speed, have screened around the U.S, Canada, Europe and Australia as well as at conferences, symposiums, on television, and in classrooms. Julia works as an Editor and DP in Chicago and most recently edited Self-Deportation: The Untold Tale of A Marginal Woman directed by Eugene Park.
Lindsey Martin is a film and video maker from Virginia. She received a BFA in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Film and Media Arts at Temple University in Philadelphia. Through hybrid narrative structures, home movie, audio recordings, documentary techniques, and by using non-actors as performers, her work depicts topics of gender identity, body image, and the microcosms of family structure.
Programmed by Anthony Kaufman & Beckie Stocchetti