Cast: Russ Russo, Natasha Alam, Doug E. Doug
Director: Ryan M. Kennedy
Country: USA
Genre: Drama | Mystery
Official Site: Here
Editor’s Notes: The Projectionist is now out in limited Kickstarter release with plans for self theatrical release in NY/LA in the future.
Film theorists in the early 1970s where obsessed with the idea that the act of watching films for pleasure was itself a deeply complex insight into human psychology. The experience was cathartic and expressive of our inner desires and projections. The debut film from Ryan Kennedy puts this idea onscreen to tell a disturbing story of a tormented man obsessed with voyeurism and watching film.
The film is an explicit homage to ‘50s noir with themes of obsession, mystery and desire, but with modern updates such as the post-Iraq/torture references and heroin abuse.
The main character Jacob ‘Nicks’ (Russ Russo) is a solitary Iraq-war veteran that is fascinated with 16mm film stock and works as a projectionist at a late night cinema in New York. He scarcely sleeps and divides his time between working, getting his films developed, drinking coffee at an all-night diner and sleeping with a prostitute called Ivana (Natasha Alam).
Due to his insomnia and undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he pushes away his family and barely talks to anyone else apart from a mysterious homeless man (Doug E. Doug) who tries to sell him hard drugs.
Nicks not only constantly projects film stock all around him, but also ‘projects’ his pain and torment onto other people. His increasing isolation and paranoia push him into developing a hatred for the city around him and eventually turning violent…
The film is an explicit homage to ‘50s noir with themes of obsession, mystery and desire, but with modern updates such as the post-Iraq/torture references and heroin abuse. There is a scene where Nicks looks out of a window and sees a mysterious man in a hat and long coat light a cigarette underneath a streetlight, which feels like page one of Film Noir class 101.
But there is something that has to be said for a cliché that has been executed with care and attention. Although Kennedy’s narrative and script are not particularly original, there is a clear passion for storytelling and form in his film. He has combined the paranoid aesthetics of Darren Aronofsky’s film Pi (π) with the urban pathos of David Fincher’s Se7en and the New York vigilantism of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
Although Kennedy’s narrative and script are not particularly original, there is a clear passion for storytelling and form in his film.
There is a wonderful irony at the heart of Ryan Kennedy’s debut film: It is filmed as a slow paced, crafted black & white neo-noir mystery full of shadows and light from flickering film projections – a kind of love letter to the anachronistic process of early filmmaking; yet in reality the film was the first of it’s kind to be privately funded and then distributed entirely through KickStarter, a highly modern form of filmmaking.
If the film proves to be a commercial success, albeit on a small scale, then this could set an interesting precedent for first-time filmmakers to gain an online audience. If this film sets a standard, then it has set the bar pretty high.
[notification type=”star”]65/100 ~ OKAY. The Projectionist is filmed as a slow paced, crafted black & white neo-noir mystery full of shadows and light from flickering film projections – a kind of love letter to the anachronistic process of early filmmaking.[/notification]
