February 14, 2013

Jeppe on a Friday in competition at Big Sky Documentary Festival and the Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois

We’re very proud to announce that Jeppe on a Friday will have its US Premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Festival on Monday, February 18th in their Feature Film competition section. Director Shannon Walsh will be in attendance!  In Montreal, Jeppe will screen on Tuesday, February 26th at 5:30 pm as part of the Rendez-vous du Cinéma Québécois. Bon cinéma!

“First, a couple of thoughts about Jeppe on a Friday, as I was lucky enough to take in the film’s second screening last night at the Crystal. Jeppe produces a well-woven narrative cord using for its strands five lives in Jeppestown, an enigma of a neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa. Most notable technique-wise is that all of the images put on the screen were captured in the same single day. This is not only a monumental feat of coordination, but the technique really does serve to intensify the viewer’s sense of dynamic interrelation. When the film is considered from the angle of really real time concomitant happenings, absent the possibility of temporal splicing and editing, the effect is striking. All of the intentions, motivations, and circumstances of the five main characters in the film are actually happening in the same set of hours; maybe even at the same exact time. For a little while I was wondering if the characters might pass by one another, each with his respective filmmaker in tow, each in the course of his own daily tasks and in pursuit of his own ends. The effect of the presentation is a heightened appreciation for the complexity of social machinations, the cross-currents of individual circumstances and intentions, and finally, the absurdly contradictory and tense nature of the entire situation in what happens to be a rather small neighborhood in one relatively small metropolis in one somewhat tucked away country. Jeppestown is just one little tent in a much larger circus.”
Full article here