TRENT HARRIS DOUBLE DOUBLE BILL (SCALARAMA)
Friday 12th September Doors 6:30pm
TICKETS £7 ADVANCE (click here) £9 ON THE DOOR
Luna Mesa 2011 60mins
Luna is a young woman in the midst of an affair with an older man when she suddenly discovers that he’s died in a hotel room in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Alongside his body she finds a diary overflowing with cryptic messages and symbols. Determined to uncover the cause of his death she embarks on a journey with his diary as her guide, little knowing it will take her around the world.She travels to Sierra Leone, Mexico and Rwanda without finding any answers before eventually landing at a dustbowl of a rundown café, coincidentally called Luna Mesa and run by a goat farming mystic.Harris’ latest film and his fifth, reveals him as a filmmaker invigorated. The film’s brilliant hues, and the casting of an actress who wouldn’t seem out of place in a mainstream movie, suggest a director in full flow. Where his previous films have had a spur of the moment, d.i.y. aesthetic – Luna, with its enhanced production values and themes of sex, death and destruction seems more contemplative and mature.The fact that he also narrates in places gives the film a very personal air, almost as if it might be the director’s own story. Fearless of the critics and boldly individual, it’s no wonder that Harris retains his reputation as one of America’s original and most fiercely independent filmmakers.___________________________________________
Rubin and Ed 1991 82mins
Drop your favourite squeaky toy and turn off the Mahler — it’s time to go on a vision quest, with one of the most playful, strange and unique wonders of the early-’90s “indie magical realism” boom. Circa his infamously high-kicking Letterman incident, Crispin Glover is amazing as an unhinged agoraphobic with a frozen cat problem and some serious platform shoes. As he goes toe-to-toe with WKRP In Cincinatti’s Howard Hesseman giddily portraying a hapless real-estate seminar junkie, Rubin and Ed drags the buddy comedy formula out into the desert, gives it a hallucinatory sunstroke, and buries it where only the oddballs dare to dig. Trent Harris’s Utah-centric feature debut is big on heart, and boasts not only nonstop, highly quotable outbursts of unrestrained acting (“My cat can eat a whole watermelon!”), but also as much goofball charm as the weirdest episodes of The Adventures of Pete & Pete. This thoroughly (and literally) wigged-out journey of malformed man love.
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Saturday 13th September Doors 6:30pm
TICKETS £7 ADVANCE (click here) £9 ON THE DOOR
The Beaver Trilogy 2000 83mins
Art. Obsession. Olivia Newton-John. For a far-out glimpse into how all these alchemical elements collide, look no further than Beaver Trilogy. In 1979, a chance meeting between eccentric surfer dude-type “Groovin’ Gary” and Trent Harris (who worked for a local Salt Lake City TV station) resulted in The Beaver Kid, a captivating short doc about Gary’s other life as an awkward, yet impassioned Olivia-styled female impersonator. Obsessively driven to the subject matter as much as Gary was driven to “be” Olivia, Harris years later refashioned the story into two separate fiction shorts — with one crudely shot on video starring a young Sean Penn, and the other starring the inimitable Crispin Glover. Viewed as a whole, Beaver Trilogy is an experience so distinct, layered, and brazenly raw that it eludes an appropriate cinematic analogy. As a film, it’s mesmerizing. As an extract of the human psyche, it’s astonishing. Please don’t keep it waiting.
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Plan 10 From Outer Space 1995 80mins
Lucinda Hall discovers a century old book penned by a mad Mormon prophet. She deciphers this odd artifact and is sucked into a world where spacemen, polygamists, and angels run amuck. Is she nuts or has she uncovered a diabolical plot to change the world led by Nehor (Karen Black), a peeved alien from the planet Kolob? "
Just because I made it up doesn't mean it isn't true!"! – Trent Harris
“Nancy Drew on Acid” – Sundance Film Festival
“A batty brilliant romp.” – Wired Magazine