Making movies is a communal act. Film sets are special environments; they buzz with the hustle of artists who are focused on capturing fleeting moments. They are also filled with blocks of time spent waiting for those conditions to fall in place, and, inside the pause, connections are made with those who share a passion for telling stories.
After wrap, editors, directors and producers spend months in dark rooms weaving the film together with fragmented clips.
Ideally, the film is then premiered at a festival where everyone’s labor can be celebrated and the stories are shared with the public. None of that is happening right now. Under the current shelter-in-place order, movie theaters are closed and hardly anyone is working on a film set. To occupy the absence of real-life screenings, we’ve put together an “imaginary block” of films made by North Texas filmmakers.
These eight films collectively show the strength of the storytellers who call this place home. Sai Selvarajan’s Coup d’état Math employs inventive animation to present the sobering plight of refugees. Yen Tan’s 1985 shows us the meaning of being kind to strangers. Ingrid, a documentary by Morrisa Maltz, paints a portrait of a former Dallas fashion designer who has self-isolated in the Ouachita Mountains and whose hard-earned wisdom is something we can all glean from inside this quarantine. The remaining filmmakers are Lizette Barrera, Kyle Montgomery, Frank Mosley, Courtney Ware and Andrew Q. Holzschuh.
These films allow viewers to reflect across a diverse range of subjects while also offering a respite from the times.
So, load these films onto the biggest screen you can find and explore the worlds these filmmakers have shared with us.
A few years after the short film 1985 was released came the feature version, which you can watch by clicking here.
Watch all of Ingrid by clicking here for the full feature courtesy of PBS.
