Little Feet
OPENING NIGHT FILM AND RECEPTION
Little Feet and Old Moon
With director Alexandre Rockwell, and stars Lana Rockwell and Nico Rockwell in person
Opening night reception sponsored by Vimeo On Demand
U.S. Dir. Alexandre Rockwell. 2013, 60 mins. U.S. premiere. DCP courtesy of the director. With Lana Rockwell, Nico Rockwell, Rene Cuante-Bautista. Alexandre Rockwell (In the Soup, 13 Moons) has been one of the leading iconoclasts of American independent film since the 1980s. With his utterly charming and deceptively modest new movie Little Feet, he has found a way to reinvigorate indie cinema, bringing it back to its ultra-low budget roots and infusing it with a spirit of improvisation and spontaneity. Rockwell’s children Nico and Lana star as a brother and sister living in Los Angeles who are barely cared for by their widowed father who dresses in an animal suit for a living and collapses drunk at night. When one of their pet goldfish dies, the children set off on an expedition to the “Los Angeles River” to find a new mate for the fish. Evoking the spirit of Jean Vigo and François Truffaut, this black-and-white odyssey film has a childlike spirit of whimsy, adventure, and bittersweet emotions. Photographed on grainy 16mm film stock, its visual style can be called magical neorealism. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Mar Del Plata International Film Festival.
Preceded by Old Moon
Puerto Rico. Dir. Raisa Bonnet. 2013, 11 mins. New York premiere. Digital projection courtesy of the director. With María Velázquez, Laura Cristina Cardona, Julio Ramos. This short film, by a student of Alexandre Rockwell at NYU, is set in Puerto Rico, and gently depicts an almost wordless tale about the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother. The film premiered with Little Feet at the Toronto International Film Festival.
