Indies for Indies presents: HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE March 13, 2010

Screenings:
Saturday, March 13, 4:30pm
Monday, March 15, 7pm
Tuesday, March 16, 9:30pm

Week 2 of Indies for Indies bids farewell to WHALE, a film several audience members flat-out loved, and brings 2 new films to Pittsburgh.

Jarrod Whaley's debut feature HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE doesn't directly reference Jean-Paul Sartre, but it sure does share a mentality. HIOP follows Morty, an unlikely protagonist as he struggles for financial and emotional survival in Chattanooga, TN. It's a film that's both achingly funny and heartbreakingly sad, and centers around a very strong lead performance by Richard Johnson.

HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE comes to us directly from Cinequest, where it sold out all of it's showings and generated the following reviews:

"The mainspring-free life—demonstrated so memorably by Morty—is perfect for an economy that has let so many millions know that their services will no longer be needed." -- Richard von Busack (Metro Silicone Valley)

“This gently paced comedy, indistinctly set in Chattanooga, Tennessee, feels like a marriage between Richard Linklater’s early work and an inversion of Mumblecore. However what first time feature director Jarrod Whaley has done here is distinct; a hyper-specific take on regional cinema, a subset of film that is itself already hyper-specific...and while the title invokes a well-known quote by Sartre, the existential angle of the film takes such a subtle and semi-literal tack on the matter you hardly know you’re thinking philosophically.” -- Sara Schieron (Boxoffice.com)

“This is a small, intimate story, suggested in part by Whaley’s judicious use of close-ups and extreme close-ups that seek to track down the inner life of these struggling, awkward characters.” -- Chuck Tryon

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Also showing will be the World Premiere of Peet Gelderblom's short OUT OF SYNC. Gelderblom, famous to cinephiles around the world for his cartoon series Directorama (and the Indies for Indies logo), presents the very first film ever shot in Anamorphic AuDiVision. What's Anamorphic AuDiVision? Well there's only one way to find out. He also shot in on the RED camera, which looks pretty stunning on the Hollywood's screen.

OUT OF SYNC was the best film I saw in 2009, regardless of length, and I say this as someone who votes for the Spirit Awards. It made my girlfriend cry. It's flat-out stunning.

“This is a terrific movie. Formally adventurous and technically impeccable but with soul and a point. A rare combination of aspects. The story is told in a very intricate, borderline too-clever manner, toying with literary POV techniques yet somehow never losing track of the basic feelings of the couple and the issues that complicate their relationship. The style is very cognizant of film history, but not a slave to it. Gelderblom's got his own voice, and it's rich and assured." -- Matt Zoller Seitz (IFC, The New York Times)

"It’s a breezy, often visually ambitious (though not ostentatious) and funny film that packs a lot of influences into its brisk 10-minute running time—De Palma, Chabrol, the brothers Coen and Dardennes, even a touch of the airy visual elegance of Vincent Minnelli make themselves known as threads in the fabric that Peet weaves into his own audacious blend." -- Dennis Cozzalio (Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule)

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