From Spotify: Welcome back finally to what I am calling season 2 of the podcast! Been on a long hiatus working on other projects, but happy to kick it off with this one. Today we have the east coast indie king himself Larry Fessenden with us. I know you guys will enjoy this one as much as I did making it. Keep an eye out for Larry’s new flick Black Out! Knowing his other works Black Out will be a film that you will regret missing. Also, when you get the chance check out the Glass Eye Pix website to know which films you need to get in your collection!
GEP hops over to Lisbon, Portugal for a screening of Larry Fessenden’s DEPRAVED
and Jack Fessenden’s FOXHOLE, along with a Jack Fessenden Lecture
“How I Made Two Feature Films by Age 21”. Part of “The Outsiders”
an American Independent Film Cycle presented by FLAD.
Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon
March 8, Wednesday, 5pm, Grand Auditorium
Barely more than a teenager, Jack Fessenden already has two feature films written, directed and premiered on his resume (in which he also dressed as a composer, editor and producer). The biological stamp — which he assumes with pride — of being the son of Larry Fessenden (one of New York’s gurus of independent horror films) would be of no use without a strong personal contribution.
Chosen as one of the “11 indie filmmakers aged 30 or under that you need to know” (Indiewire, 2017), Jack Fessenden regularly attended his father’s studios during his childhood and adolescence and his curiosity allowed him to learn practical skills. various stages of film production. He made several short films before making his debut, aged 17, in the long format with Stray Bullets, about which Chris O’Falt, in the same Indiewire, said that the most impressive thing was not only the security and economy with which the young filmmaker it dealt with the choreography of violence, but how it found subtlety and depth in the film’s quieter moments. More ambitious, Foxhole, his next work, is part of the long tradition of antiwar humanist film, managing to achieve “an almost abstract beauty” (Josh Siegel, MoMA).
“This kid is going to go far,” said Meira Blaustein, co-founder of the Woodstock Film Festival. It’s already on its way, we would say.
A wave of nostalgia and yearning hit this old fan of Physical Media when GEP pal Dalton Salisbury (The Strangers, Holiday, Dinoboy) sent this photo from Atlanta while touring with the band Computer Wife. Long Live Discs and Cover Art!
From Screen Anarchy: In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at Life in a Blender’s Frankenstein Cannot Be Stopped, directed by Larry Fessenden.
Larry Fessenden loves Frankenstein. It might even be an understatement to call it love. In an interview I did with him for the Dutch-language film magazine Schokkend Nieuws he stated: “It’s how I see the world. It’s my religion, my mythology.”
Fessenden, who as a director might be most well known for two Wendigo-related features he made (the coming-of-age horror Wendigo and the eco horror The Last Winter), and his contributions for the game Until Dawn, keeps often returning to the same themes in his work. The wendigo-myth is one, but Frankenstein is the other big main staple. In Habit a person wearing a Frankenstein-mask shows up at a party, and N is for Nexus, his segment for ABCs of Death is a cheeky retelling of Frankenstein surrounding a Halloween-themed traffic accident. It is in two other films, in which he explores the limits of science, that his love for Frankenstein most clearly shines through.
Glass Eye Collaborator Chadd Harbold (DEPRAVED, MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND, CRUMB CATCHER) produces new flick LINOLEUM. Unspooling this weekend at The Quad in NYC, followed by Q&A’s with stars Jim Gaffigan, Amy Hargreaves, director Colin West and producer Chadd Harbold.
Much like last year’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Like Me explores the impact of social media on the younger generation. Addison Timlin stars as Kiya, who becomes a small internet sensation after posting a video of her robbing a convenience store online. Her newfound notoriety encourages her to go on a bigger crime spree, and she desires to record every second of it. Along the way, she kidnaps a paint-huffing drifter (played by indie-horror icon Larry Fessenden) and involves him in her criminal escapades in a number of distressing ways.
What sets Like Me apart from other films that wade in the same waters is its unique, chaotic visual style. Director Rob Mockler really knows how to capture the fast-paced world of an internet-obsessed teenager (who also happens to be a psychopath), infusing the film with both grit and blaring neon colors. You wouldn’t be wrong to draw similar comparisons to Spring Breakers, but Like Me is a twisted beast all its own. It’ll gross you out, make you laugh, and get under your skin.
I Can See You is a shot-on-video micro-budget horror film that is much more than the sum of its parts. The setup is pretty simple: three young men and their girlfriends go into the woods for a photoshoot, but the mysterious disappearance of one of the women sparks a gradual descent into madness.
If you can get past the (admittedly) amateurish production quality, you’ll be in for a real treat. This is a truly weird mix of slow-burn horror and absurd, creepy comedy not unlike something you’d find on Tim and Eric. While the movie chugs along at snail’s pace, it masterfully maintains a bizarrely unnerving atmosphere. And if you stick with it, your patience will be rewarded: the film’s climax features a hallucinogenic nightmare sequence that feels ripped directly from David Lynch’s consciousness. This is by no means for everyone, but fans of David Lynch and his style of work will find a lot to like here.
Then again, a 30 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and an even worse audience approval rating of 12 percent indicates that maybe director Larry Fessenden’s B-tier schlocker doesn’t even deserve to be put on the same ironically adored pedestal as The Room as several reviews claimed, but that hasn’t prevented the forgotten aquatic nightmare from coming up for air on streaming.
As per FlixPatrol, Beneath has resurfaced as a Top 10 hit on Netflix in multiple countries around the world, and it isn’t too difficult to figure out why subscribers – especially those with a soft spot for bonkers horror – would find themselves enticed by a low budget effort that’s sold entirely on the back of the primary antagonist being a gigantic man-eating catfish with a preposterous taste for delicious human flesh.
Six recently-graduated teenagers decide to spend one final day together before heading off on their different paths in life, but there’s not a chance all of them will be making it back to shore alive when the monstrous fish destroys their oars. Trapped and terrified, they decide the best solution is to figure out which one of them deserves to be sacrificed to their aquatic adversary, a logical decision that inevitably creates panic, conflict, and the airing of some long-held grievances.
Glass Eye Pix is the fierce independent NYC-based production outfit headed by award-winning art-horror auteur Larry Fessenden with the mission of supporting individual voices in the arts. Read more...
