El Planeta, 2021(Film still)
Futuristic and reflective, AnOther’s picks of this year’s digital festival span Dior Saddle bag-toting grifters and hunted mythical creatures
February 08, 2021
A recent Instagram post from the documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf summed up the current state of attending prestige film festivals globally very well: “I’m alone in a virtual Chinese restaurant at a Dutch documentary film festival,” he wrote, captioning a screenshot of his avatar enjoying “dumplings” and “karaoke” at an empty table. Surreal attempts to replicate physical festival mingling aside, the transferral of festivals like Utah’s
Sundance to the digital space has ushered in a new democratisation of these events, allowing fans everywhere to spot the films most likely to have an impact on culture for themselves. This year, the best storytelling showcased a cinematic landscape both self-reflective and radically future-bound: revealing alternate viewpoints on the past, and
Like all great comings-of-age,
Deanna Templeton’s
What She Said ends with the credits, and the rest of her life. In the final pages of her new photography book with MACK, she meets a boy, Ed.
January 20th 1988
Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Palomino
Well Ann picked me up at 9am, when we got there the lines were really long. We never got into see them. There was a small riot, they played 1/2 a song. Jason and his friend Ed, were so funny. I have a growing crush on Ed, he has pretty eyes.
Later, he’ll become her husband, also a photographer, and professional skateboarder. The book itself combines a series of Templeton s actual diary entries and saved concert flyers spanning her own teenage years in the 80s, alongside photographs of various girls she has shot on the street over the past 20 years. But as much as these original, pink-papered journal entries detail failed nights out, fleeting romances, dodgy encounters and familial fights that bring to mind the American films o