SXSW. Podcast. Woodpecker.

Alex Karpovsky, whose debut feature The Hole Story is still drawing raves, brought Woodpecker to SXSW and his new hometown this year. Aaron Hillis talks with him about the fragile line between documentary and fiction and about his star, Jon E Hyrns, whom you may know from Johnny Berlin. To download or listen, click here.

I'll remember SXSW 08 not only for its terrific lineup of films but also for not being able to turn around without coming face-to-face with either someone I hadn't seen since SXSW 07 or some blogger or critic or filmmaker I'd been wanting to meet forever. In other words, SXSW 08 was a blast. And as always at film festivals, once the niceties are done with, you start trading lists of movies you've liked so far. Inevitably, Woodpecker would rank right up there on the list of anyone who'd seen it.

So when I finally caught it myself, my expectations were probably unreasonably high. But while they may have initially thrown me off, an appreciation has been quietly taking shape in the back of my mind for this dual portrait of an individual and collective longing for something, someone, anything to hang our hopes on - even a presumably extinct oddball bird. The individual (Hyrns), a birdwatcher so desperate not so much for love as for mere recognition from his fellow humans that he melds his own identity with a town's prospective economic salvation, wraps a narrative framework around a collective hysteria (albeit a mildly harmless and amusing sort of hysteria). This one's still growing on me.

More on Woodpecker from Jette Kernion (Cinematical), Eric Kohn (indieWIRE) and Michael Tully (Hammer to Nail).

Posted by dwhudson at March 18, 2008 10:30 AM