MUMBLECORE MUSICAL, 2020
A situationist musical about Mumblecore filmmakers who work in a vacuum cleaner factory or on board ships and are trying to sabotage each other's careers, that will ultimately conclude at a film festival inside a vacuum cleaner in Switzerland in an animated grand finale.
This project inhabits the “naturalistic” tradition of Mumblecore, mainly as camoflauge. The formless format of the Musical departs even further from the illusion of realism. In a way this is a send up of the pretensions of the mid-2000s genre to represent Reality: the film’s subject is the nature of Reality under Capitalism and whether or not there is any escape from one’s Reality: or whether we are trapped in it the way we are trapped in our bodies: the film is a discussion about this and an argument for positive action and play.
Filming began in September 2019 and continued through the early months of 2020 until fatally interrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic.
Artist Statement from 2020:
"This project is open ended and transformative. I am interested in unfinished, organic growing systems. There is no reason to mimic the structures of closure that characterize industrially produced media. The scenes were made with volunteer actors and friends, both improvised and scripted, in an attempt to make movies constantly as an imaginative parallel universe. A Hi-8 camera used since 1998 is the only filmmaking equipment. I am very interested in the process of filmmaking as an ongoing experiment."
Episodes of Mumblecore Musical are viewable at Vimeo.com/matthewthurber
1.Ties
2. Thornberries/ Shitty Bike
3. Daddy, Mosquito, Brick
4. What Then Is Mumblecore?
5. Lemonade
6. Mumblecore Doors/ Finale
This project inhabits the “naturalistic” tradition of Mumblecore, mainly as camoflauge. The formless format of the Musical departs even further from the illusion of realism. In a way this is a send up of the pretensions of the mid-2000s genre to represent Reality: the film’s subject is the nature of Reality under Capitalism and whether or not there is any escape from one’s Reality: or whether we are trapped in it the way we are trapped in our bodies: the film is a discussion about this and an argument for positive action and play.
Filming began in September 2019 and continued through the early months of 2020 until fatally interrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic.
Artist Statement from 2020:
"This project is open ended and transformative. I am interested in unfinished, organic growing systems. There is no reason to mimic the structures of closure that characterize industrially produced media. The scenes were made with volunteer actors and friends, both improvised and scripted, in an attempt to make movies constantly as an imaginative parallel universe. A Hi-8 camera used since 1998 is the only filmmaking equipment. I am very interested in the process of filmmaking as an ongoing experiment."
Episodes of Mumblecore Musical are viewable at Vimeo.com/matthewthurber
1.Ties
2. Thornberries/ Shitty Bike
3. Daddy, Mosquito, Brick
4. What Then Is Mumblecore?
5. Lemonade
6. Mumblecore Doors/ Finale
