sethrgrossman

This is a documentary to mull over. Director Edward Tyndall uses Medicine Mound, TX, to explore the nature of memory, regret, and slow obsolescence of rural America. Myna Potts has built a museum to her own memories of a town that has long since disappeared. In reviewing the museum's catalog, we tour Myna's youth, her friends, her acquaintances, and a past she's desperately trying to preserve, even as her memory fails her. Tyndall's observational approach to the subject, and his beautiful cinematography, combine to create a compelling work of art. As in his earlier short documentary, Deconfliction, Tyndall's work has a rare intelligence and restraint.

I caught Bottle Tree at the Sidewalk Film Festival, and was truly impressed by the thoughtfulness of the storytelling and direction. Bottle Tree is about a young African-American man coming to terms with his mother's death in a very concrete and meaningful way. Tyndall makes interesting choices in every shot, and as the film unfolds you realize that he's shown considerable restraint in this depiction of grief, addiction, and ultimately, redemption. For a short film to culminate in such an effective catharsis is rare, and considering that this is Tyndall's first foray into directing, I look forward to seeing what he does with a larger palette.

Human civilization may be judged, in the end, by the contribution of its artists to the greater social discourse, and if this is the case for short film, then Sophie Goodhart makes a good case for the continuation and, dare I suggest it, procreation of the species.

My Blind Brother is a unique achievement in the short and uneventful history of cinema, as it touches each of the available human emotions and stimulates them to a feverish climax. Afterwards it tosses them an old towel and asks them to clean themselves up in the bathroom. For days after seeing this film I felt empty inside, but I've grown as a cineaste, and as a man, and have come to appreciate it. Sophie Goodhart is an artist of incomparable virtue, and I look forward to her imminent assumption -- with her first feature film -- of the mantel of genius.