Kid Candidate of the new documentary, part of this year s SXSW film Festival
In 2018, 24-year-old Hayden Pedigo released a bizarre 58-second video announcing his candidacy for Amarillo city council. At the time, Pedigo had no intention of launching an actual political career; the video was meant to be a Harmony Korine-esque exercise with an amateur filmmaker friend.
But when the video goes viral at least within his community the resulting attention inspires him to make a real run at upending the status quo.
So begins
Kid Candidate, the new documentary from director Jasmine Stodel. One of the first things we learn about Hayden Pedigo is that he is a “well-meaning dupe.” These are the words of Jeff Blackburn, one-time founder of the Innocence Project of Texas and Pedigo’s volunteer campaign advisor. Even though Blackburn believes the young man’s campaign is entirely genuine, the attorney spends most of the movie criticizing him for his lack of a clear politic
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched
When I was a boy, growing up in the North of England, I could take you to the place where King Arthur is buried. He and the Knight of the Round Table slumber under Alderley Edge, waiting for when Albion faces its direst peril.
The story is folklore. It is the wisdom of the people, the common knowledge that there is something arcane just under the surface, and it s that concept that pervades former Alamo Drafthouse/Fantastic Fest programmer and Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies founder Kier-La Jannisse s encyclopedic exploration of folk horror,
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched.
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil
In 2018, pop star Demi Lovato lived through one of the scariest things a person can survive from: an overdose. Her latest documentary series,
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil is meant to serve as window into her psyche, and open a frank discussion about her addiction.
For part of it, the documentary (which had its world premiere as the opening night title for SXSW 2021) succeeds. Lovato dives into her late father’s overdose, the pressures of growing up in the Disney limelight, and her mental health struggles leading up to her own overdose. Jordan Jackson, Lovato’s assistant at the time, unravels the horrible day, and her recollection is depicted by a simplistic animated sequence. There’s no delicacy when it comes to the reality of an overdose: Lovato lists she had three strokes and a heart attack, had to fight pneumonia, and suffers from blind spots, multiple organ failure and brain damage. Her pain is valid and real, but as honest as
Lily Topples the World
What is it like to be in a room where one young woman is spending hundreds of hours building domino art? “Very, very, very tense,” Jeremy Workman says, referring to the setting of his new SXSW-selected documentary,
Lily Topples the World.
The film follows the life and art of Lily Hevesh, AKA Hevesh5, a YouTube star from the suburbs of New England. You’ve probably seen her videos before: thousands of dominos arranged with military precision, toppling by the thousands in mandalic spirals and Rube Goldberg-esque sequences.
Hevesh, a mostly reserved and college student, operates the most subscribed and watched domino art YouTube channel. She runs in a cohort of dedicated, young, mostly male domino artists. She’s been making videos since she was a child. Workman, who shoots, directs, and edits all of his films, narrows his focus not just on Hevesh’s ingenious structures but on how she carefully moves among her work and the long, meditative durations o
Potato Dreams of America
From the very start of
Potato Dreams of America, an autobiographical film from writer/director Wes Hurley, the titular Potato understands how to frame a story.
While watching a black-and-white TV set with his grandma Tamara (Lea DeLaria), Potato forms his fingers into a rectangle to peer through – first at his father beating his mother and then, drifting, at the television screen. He reimagines his parents’ domestic violence as a celluloid dance, rough but staged, and all in clean maneuvers unlike the fight happening in reality.
Scenes of Potato as a youth (Hersh Powers/Tyler Bocock) in mid-Eighties’ USSR are painted with vibrant, broad brushstrokes. Each scene has a stage-play affect, as though at any moment you might see figures in all black run in to rearrange the sets. These are memories, and so thrum with emotion rather than strict realism. Another striking element are the accents of Potato and his mother, Lena (Sera Barbieri/Marya Sea Kaminsk