The Speed of Life

(USA | 2007 | 84 mins | VIDEO)

VIDEO

San Francisco Premiere

Exec. Producers: Joe Nicolo, Jonathan Sachar, Jeff Erb, F. X. Vitolo
Producers: Ira Deutchman, Greg O'Connor
Producer/Writer/Editor/Music: Ed Radtke
Writer: Marc Nieson
Cinematographer: Learan Kahanov
Editor: Jim Klein
Sound: John Mays
Music: Tim Berger
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Justin Soto, Peter Appel, Edward Seamon

Ed Radtke, whose THE DREAM CATCHER (SFIAAFF '00) was one of the most lyrical, sublime works in recent American cinema, returns with a new film of outsider characters attempting to (re)create the fantasies of their lives. The film boasts an aesthetic as ecletic as its heroes, with Radtke using multiple formats (super-8, 16mm, early video, etc) to enrich his poetic visual palette.

Sammer is a pensive 13-year-old redhead who leads a gang of thieving kids. Ever inventive, the kids conspire to steal cameras and equipment from unsuspecting tourists in New York. Back at home, Sammer replays his collection of stolen tapes on a vast network of appropriated monitors and projectors, watching and longing for people and places not his own. His own reality involves a delinquent brother in prison, an ailing foster mother with poor eyesight, and an estranged father who has supposedly moved to Alaska. Sammer's life is further complicated by Frank, a probation officer who for unclear reasons commissions him to spy on a mysterious man. Eventually, Sammer begins to piece together a collection of narratives out of the images he's stolen or assembled, using his camera as both a weapon and a means of reconciliation.

Radtke's work is a radiant showcase whose characters are immediately memorable. Watching life through viewfinders provides them a peculiar portrait of others, one that can be fast-forwarded, slowed, and replayed. Eventually, the characters too become part of the images, creating and moving through them to see themselves in a new, larger perspective.

In Person: Ed Radtke

-- Christine Kwon

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Sponsored by

Co-presenters

Hapihour
UC Berkeley Mixed Student Union

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