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 | THE COST OF LIVING
| East Coast Premiere |
| Crew: | Producers: Pamela Falkenberg - Screenwriters: Jack Cochran - Editing and sound design: Jack Cochran - Art direction: Pamela Falkenberg - Cinematography: Pam Falkenberg
| | Email: | outliermovingpictures gmail.com |
synopsis
Inspired by Polaroid stills and short poems by Jack Cochran, "The Cost of Living" is the first film produced by Jack and recently reconnected filmmaking partner Pamela Falkenberg. "Cost" is an experimental personal film mashup that ranges from everyday situations and individual biography (such as meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time, finding a used condom on the front curb, or overhearing a conversation in a coffee shop) to modern problems and cultural challenges (such as the place of love in hookup culture, using new vocabularies as insulation against harsh post 9/11 realities, or finding beauty in a broken world). Found footage, animation, special effects, and a collage of audio sources combine with live action footage in ways perhaps not possible before the ubiquity of the internet and the affordability of high quality HD video equipment. While having something in common with the personal documentary, the experimental collage, the biographical narrative, and the essay film, Cost is comfortable as an outlier, a freewheeling melange whose quirky visual style resists any single genre or category. While each segment of the film begins with a single still image and Jack's reading of his written words, that starting point could lead to Balinese-style puppets sporting road sign filled thought bubbles ... or to a Chevy Astro van commercial as a bizarre message from the grim reaper. However, the working methods of filmmakers, poets, and musicians such as Chris Marker, Sarah Polley, Terence Nance, Leonard Cohen, and Neko Case provide some touchstones and context for Pam and Jack's working methods. Three line synopsis: Cost is a personal film mashup that ranges from everyday situations and individual biography (meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time or finding a used condom on the front curb) to modern problems (the place of love in hookup culture or finding beauty in a broken world).
director
Jack Cochran is an independent filmmaker who has produced, directed, or shot a variety of experimental and personal projects. He also works as a Director of Photography, with extensive experience shooting commercials, independent features, and documentaries. He has had a varied commercial client list which includes BMW, Ford, Nissan, Fujifilm, Iomega, Corum Watches, and Forte Hotels. His features and documentaries have been shown at the Sundance, Raindance, Teluride, Tribeca, Edinburgh, Chicago, Houston, and Taos film Festivals, winning several honors. His commercials and documentaries have won Silver Lions from Cannes, a BAFTA (British Academy Award), Peabody Awards, and Cable Aces. Jack was trained at the University of Iowa Creative Writers Workshop as well as the University of Iowa film studies program. Some of his notable credits include Director of Photography on Brian Griffin's "Claustrofoamia," Cinematography for Antony Thomas' "Tank Man," Director/Cinematographer of "Viento Nocturno", and Cinematographer of Ramin Niami's feature film "Paris."
Jack has been writing poetry all his life, but never knew what to do with his poems, until he showed his notebooks to Pam, who said, "You're a filmmaker -- why shouldn't they be films?"
Pam Falkenberg is an independent filmmaker who received her PhD from the University of Iowa and taught at Northern Illinois University, St.Mary's College, and the University of Notre Dame. She directed the largest student film society in the US while she was at the University of Iowa, and also ran film series for the Snite Museum of Art in South Bend, IN. Her experimental film with Dan Curry, "Open Territory," received an individual filmmaker grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from the Center for New Television and the Indiana Arts Council. "OT" was screened at numerous film festivals, including the AFI Video Festival, and was nominated for a regional Emmy. Her other films include museum installations, scholarly/academic hybrid works shown at film conferences, and a documentary commissioned by the Peace Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
Pam wants to make all kinds of films with Jack, but she is particularly proud of having suggested that his poems should be made into films, and collaborating on bringing them to life.
Website
filmmaker's note
Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg are making personal films together again under the name Outlier Moving Pictures. They hope their new films will be worthy of the name -- avoiding the usual patterns and approaching their subject matter from the margins (which sounds better than saying that as filmmakers they're oddballs and cranks). Pam and Jack met in graduate school and made films together when they were young. Jack went on to become a professional cinematographer working out of LA and London, while Pam stayed in the Midwest, where she was a college professor and independent filmmaker before dropping out to work in visual display. Their first film together, "The Cost of Living," based on some of Jack's short poems, screened at several film festivals, including the Buffalo International Film Festival and the Cornwall Film Festival, was nominated for two awards at the 2017 Jim Thorpe Film Festival, and took the award for best experimental film in its first screening at the 2016 WV FILMmakers Festival. Other short poetry films have screened at the Ò Bhéal Poetry Film Festival (2016, 2018), the Juteback Poetry Film Festival (2017, 2018), the Festival Silencio (2017) , the Filmpoem Festival (2017), the 6th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival (2017), the 6th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens Greece, 2018), and the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival (2018). Recently completed is an experimental documentary essay about the North Dakota landscape and Teddy Roosevelt, "Teddy Roosevelt and Fracking," which showed out-of-competition as a work-in-progress at the WV FILMmakers Fest in October 2017 and premiered at the Queens World Film Festival in March 2018, where it was nominated for three awards (Best Cinematography, Best Director, and Best Documentary Short), taking the award for Best Documentary Short. "Teddy" has also screened at the 2018 Ekofilm Festival in Poland, the 2018 Buffalo International Film Festival, the 2018 Go West Film Festival, and the American Presidents Film and Literary Festival at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Museum and Library (October 2018), where it was nominated for two judges awards and won the Audience Choice Award. Along with that, a series of shorts about photo opportunities and roadside attractions in Texas (the first installment of which, "Prada Marfa," premiered in the True Texas Travel category at the Thin Line Festival in April 2018), and some brief experimental romantic comedies based on Craigslist's Missed Connections, a compilation version of which, "Missed Connections Anthology," premiered at the Austin Spotlight Festival in April 2018, and screened for the second time at the KinoDrome Festival in Cleveland, OH in September 2018. Their most recent poetry films are collaborations with Lucy English, "The Shadow," and "The Names of Trees," for her Book of Hours project (http://thebookofhours.org/).
related links
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