FOXHOLE director Jack Fessenden with friends and collaborators: (top) producers Chris Ingvordsen, Adam Scherr, STRAY BULLETS thesp Roger Peltzman; (bottom) Annie Nocenti, Beck Underwood and festival director Meira Blaustein.

Hollywood on the Hudson with Film Director, Jack Fessenden

Writer-director-actor-composer Jack Fessenden was born into the film industry, frequently visiting the indie-horror sets of his father, Larry Fessenden. He made his first feature film, Stray Bullets when he was just 15 years old and still in high school, causing Indiewire to name him one of “11 Filmmakers 30 or Under You Need to Know.” He most recently produced and directed Foxhole which will have its U.S. Premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival.  He is currently a student at Wesleyan University.

As part of our Hollywood on the Hudson series, we sat down with Jack Fessenden and Woodstock Film Festival Co-Founder and Artistic Director, Meira Blaustein, to discuss the draw of, and rebellion against, filmmaking in the digital age, what it was like to grow up surrounded by the film industry, and the real-life family story that inspired Foxhole, which was shot here in Woodstock, NY.

Read the Full Interview

CHOOSE YOUR OWN MISADVENTURE: THE LABYRINTH OF HORROR VIDEO GAME SCRIPTWRITING
a discussion with Graham Reznick and Fessenden
for the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies
Tonight 28 September at 7:30 PST

Flame thrower Guy

Glass Eye Pix wants you to celebrate Shocktober this and every year by joining us in counting down the days to our favorite night of the season: HALLOWEEN! What better way than with our SHOCKTOBER NIGHTS calendar. Behind each of the 31 die-cut passages lurks a monstrous and ghoulish delight, brought to life by Glass Eye Pix artist Brahm Revel.

Order today!

In celebration of the World Premiere of Rigo Garay’s short film SIZE UP
at the 2021 Woodstock Film Festival, composer D.Catalano releases an unused
track from the Size Up score.  

“He Just Killed Your Brother / Noel’s Theme”
is now streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.

Catch SIZE UP at Woodstock, Oct 2.
Get your tix!

Translation by Google Translate

KINO-ZEIT Review
FOXHOLE (2021)

A film review by Bianka-Isabell Scharmann

THE PRESERVATION OF HUMANITY

A meadow traversed by ditches in the fog, a mud hole fenced in by barbed wire at night, a humvee rolling under a rolling sun, three theaters of war, three “foxholes”: the American Civil War, World War I and one of the desert wars of the past 20 years are fast (Iraq or Afghanistan are almost irrelevant) identified, it’s about America. These three scenes become arenas for questions of moral principle.

Since the 1910s at the latest, war has been part of the history of film in the form of news, as a documentary film or as narrative mass spectacle. While the heroization of the winners is part of the fixed repertoire – often of American color – there are also anti-war films or satires again and again. I’m thinking of Stanley Kubrick’s Paths to Fame or Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Now Jack Fessenden, screenwriter, director and also responsible for editing and music, a newcomer – and war films are expensive because of the crowd scenes, the locations to be re-enacted. You can tell from the film that Foxhole was produced on a budget: the cast is small, the special effects simple. But it is precisely this reduction that makes the economic decisions aesthetically interesting and Foxhole a focused, intelligent and thoughtful film. Reduced to a technical spectacle, something emerges that is overlooked or neglected in all the explosive spectacle: that wars demand everything morally, ethically, and humanly from the actors in the field.

Foxhole’s means of choice is to turn concrete moral conflicts into a dump for larger political issues. Do the white soldiers help a wounded African American who, when the war is over, “will probably have it better than before?” Do the Americans shoot a German spy on the spot, a de facto execution – a war crime – or do they take him prisoner? Will fire open on civilians who have come to collect, mourn, and bury their dead? All these concrete questions arise in the discussion between the members of the groups on the question of the meaninglessness or meaninglessness of their own actions. “What are you fighting for?” The black soldier is asked in the First World War. “For the same thing as you: democracy.” In the war of positions, where enemies still clash in their humanity, personal interaction is possible in order to recognize one another, in the last episode the enemy – the one outside – remains invisible. “Why the hell are we still out here?” The answer “orders” replaces the conviction that we are fighting for something with the simple execution of actions. And so the moral undermining of American politics becomes visible in all its clarity.

KINO-ZEIT Review

Translation by Google Translate:

Oldenburg – powerlessness, inner turmoil, despair, fear and the question of the meaningfulness of their actions: the viewer in the film “Foxhole” is very close to the emotions and thoughts of American soldiers. “Foxhole” celebrates its world premiere at the 28th Oldenburg Film Festival.

The consequences of the decisions that the US soldiers have to make weigh heavily, e.g. when it comes to the question of how to deal with a prisoner. Excessive demands, fear of death, mistrust, questions of morality and attitude, the unpredictability of the moment – all this is the subject of “Foxhole”. It is also interesting that in the three Chapters / episodes of the film the same actors are used, and thereby demonstrate a great variability in their representations.

What the life of the soldiers looked like before the war, what makes them tick as a private person, does not play a major role here, it is the emotional impact of the moment that counts. It may not always be easy to identify with individual characters, but “Foxhole” has a pull. It’s an amazingly mature and reflective film for such a young director.

Instead of a sprawling plot with a variety of visual values ​​and scene changes, he focuses on the tense emotional world of the soldiers, e.g. in the trench enclosed by a smoke screen or in a humvee that drives through the Iraqi desert under the glaring sun. Again and again with close-up

Men and close-ups worked, longer shots, quiet moments in which the soldiers’ gazes tell from their inner life.

The permanent threat situation creates anxiety, especially since the enemy is mostly invisible. Suddenly shots fall out of nowhere. Chaos breaks out. The war is within reach.

NWZ Review

CHOOSE YOUR OWN MISADVENTURE:
THE LABYRINTH OF HORROR VIDEO GAME SCRIPTWRITING (LA ONLINE)

Tue. Sep. 28, 2021 – 7:30 pm PDT – 9:00 pm PDT
Instructed by: Larry Fessenden, Graham Reznick

Horror has been a key component of video games since the medium’s inception. From Haunted House for the Atari 2600 to this year’s Resident Evil: Village, video game designers have tasked players with something wholly unique to the genre: live through the horror, or die trying. The artistry behind crafting compelling stories with stimulating and responsive game mechanics requires a singular perspective and skill set. Miskatonic is proud to welcome genre legends Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick to discuss their role in the craft behind such hit horror video games as Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan. This lecture will be an in-depth exploration of their approach to the maze-like structure of horror video game scripts, and how they make sure the audience never gets lost in the process. Horror has always pushed the boundaries of sensation, and Fessenden and Reznick know firsthand how powerful, and terrifying, this relatively new medium can be.

Get your tickets TODAY!