Beyond the Frame

We went to Chicago Filmmakers last night to catch a screening of Jess+Moss.  It is a beautiful film that captures the memory of a summer of lost innocence.  It is a clinic on the use of film stocks, working with younger actors (or making older actors appear younger) and non-linear editing.

From the New York Times:

The film, an atmospheric story about two cousins in rural Western Kentucky, was largely improvised in a few on-location visits to a tobacco farm owned by the director’s family, and shot on 16-mm film, some of it years-old stock bought for pennies off Craigslist. (It was literally frozen.) Originally conceived as a short, the feature version was finished just days before the festival’s opening.

Getting into Sundance “was the best thing that could’ve happened to it,” the director, Clay Jeter, 27, said. “Otherwise we could’ve finished this movie forever. There’s no real financiers, other than my parents and me. They would’ve just called it a loss and said, yep, should’ve gone to engineering school.”

Watch the trailer and if you like what you see, it’s available on iTunes.

~ü