SXSW begins today, with opening weekend premieres by Paige Bethmann (Remaining Native), Dan Farah (The Age of Disclosure) Heather Hogan and Carter (Other Side) and Grace Hughes-Hallett (The Secret of Me). You can read about their experiences directing their first films in our piece, SXSW Ones to Watch: Debut Directors.
On Wednesday we featured established directors, which included Robert Stone (Starman), Kahane Corn Cooperman (Creede U.S.A.) and Elaine Epstein (Arrest the Midwife) whose films premiere at the festival.
Today, we’re spotlighting a fresh crop of films by veteran directors:
The Tallest Dwarf directed by Julie Forrest Wyman (premieres March 10)
Assembly co-directed by Johnny Symons and Rashaad Newsome (premieres today)
Baby Doe directed by Jessica Earnshaw (premieres today)
Uvalde Mom directed by Anayansi Prado (premieres 10)
As excited as I am to be in Austin, I’ll refrain from making any further Western puns and let these directors relate in their own words how their latest projects came into being.
Follow us on instagram to see highlights of the festival from the ground.
Next Thursday, The Gotham is hosting a virtual workshop on story structure in Documentaries. In Unstructured: Breaking Form in Documentary Filmmaking, award-winning filmmaker Laurie Townshend (A Mother Apart, Charley) examines alternative storytelling frameworks that embrace complexity, nuance, and real-world unpredictability. Through case studies, hands-on exercises, and an interview with a guest filmmaker, this three-hour course will challenge traditional narrative models and help filmmakers craft authentic, dynamic stories.
As filmmaker Julie unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being tokenized and put on display. Together they create films that reclaim a complicated history and speak back to the echoes of eugenics in the newly emerging pharmaceutical interventions that make little people taller.
My motivations for telling this story:
I became a filmmaker as a response to living in a body that was always seen as different — never fitting into well-established marginal categories. I am fat, but often not seen as fat enough for fat activism. I am bisexual, and have sometimes felt unseen in the LGBTQ community. And then there are the rumors of ‘partial’ dwarfism in my family. My dwarf-like body, with its long torso and short limbs, inherited from my father, ensured me a childhood of “oompa loompa” taunts and forged my identity as someone who does not fit in anywhere. Growing up, I never knew what to call this difference or whether there was anyone outside my family who looked like me.
I began this film by chronicling my search for a diagnosis that would explain why my body looks the way it does. In the process I was introduced to a story much larger than my own: a crisis in the dwarfism community sparked by new drugs promising to make little people taller. As I expanded my film to encompass my new community, I began to recognize the importance of incorporating my own story and reflecting on my own position. My recent diagnosis of hypochondroplasia dwarfism has created an opening for me to seek my place inside the little people community, but also to question the boundaries between who is welcome in a given community and who is not. This insider-outsider position affords me a unique perspective into the question of belonging. It allows me to explore the experiences of fitting and not fitting, and to weigh the value of belonging alongside the cost of conformity.
Biggest challenges and achievements:
Walking in the door of LPA (Little People of America) was truly an electric experience. It's a very common LP (little person) experience I've come to learn. On one hand, I had never been the tallest person in the room, which made me feel like maybe I didn't belong. But at the same time, I'd never been surrounded by people whose bodies, butts, thighs and calves were the same shape as mine and my dad's and my grandma's. At first I kept my personal question of belonging close to my chest, but then, when I started mentioning to other LP’s that my grandma and dad had the same body type and that we were possibly undiagnosed – as soon as I mentioned that to anyone in the LPA community - they responded with “Welcome, there's a place for you here.”
The Tallest Dwarf premieres at Rollins Theatre at The Long Center on March 10 at 9:00pm
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