Thou Wast Mild and Lovely + Director's Q&A
classified 18No date/time details available.
Josephine Decker
We are delighted to present two films by Josephine Decker, a powerful new voice in independent filmmaking. Sensual, experimental and hypnotic, recalling the natural wonder of Terence Malick, the uncanniness of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and the unsettling dreamworld of David Lynch, these two features Butter on the Latch (screening on Mon 10 Aug at 18:50) and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely mark Decker out as one of the brightest hopes for American film.
- We are delighted to welcome Josephine Decker to Watershed for a Q&A following the screening.
Recently hailed by the New Yorker as:
'the most original independent filmmaker to surface in the past few years,'
This is a great opportunity to discover a brilliant new female voice in filmmaking.
'The unholy marriage of Ingmar Bergman and David Lynch.' Indiewire
'I'm not saying that there's only one way to make great and important films, but that Josephine Decker's way (like Wes Anderson's, like Terence Malick's) is ecstatic, essential, invigorating, inspiring, and inimitable.' The New Yorker'
A filmmaker of considerable skill and imagination... she will soon be a known commodity.' Sight & Sound
Thou Wast Mild and Lovely is the wildly imaginative and unexpected feature from this leading light in US indie filmmaking. It's the creepy, erotic tale of married man Akin (mumblecore godfather Joe Swanberg) who takes a summer season job working as a ranch hand on a remote Kentucky cattle ranch. Akin craves isolation and here he has only the deranged farmer and his strange, earthy daughter for company.
While he can't make sense of their world - full of inappropriate urges and simmering menace and lust - it's also clear that he's not so straightforward; he harbours secrets back at home. Very much a creative collaboration with cast, editor, cinematographer (who provides a fantastic bovine-POV cam), Decker describes this as 'magical-realism-romcom-mumblecore-western-with-horror mixture'. Whatever one calls it, it'll leave a mark... and maybe some dirt under your fingernails.