Rectangibles
2013 · 10m · USA
Directed by Colleen Kwok TungShuen
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Two young men in a fictional trailer park dig up Kodachrome 8mm film and try to race it to the last lab in America still willing to develop it. Verite-stylized portrait of obsolescence and the kids hauling around its corpse.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Kodachrome eulogy via trailer park, shot by Joshua James Richards before he was the Nomadland guy. That's the kind of pre-fame pedigree footnote I exist to dig up.
A narrative built around the actual real-world deadline of Kodachrome processing dying is the rare conceit where reality does the structural work — Andrea Arnold detoured through a film-stock obituary is exact. Strong.
Building a narrative around the actual real-world deadline of Kodachrome processing dying is the kind of stakes-from-format move I find irresistible. The verite-fictional-trailer-park with Santa-suit wheelies is the texture promise.
Reviews
Characterized by its visual poetry but also by a sense of instant nostalgia, it registers with a unique mode of storytelling.