FEATURE
FILMS AVAILABLE
MAN
WOMAN FILM
 Comedy/Drama, 16mm color/black and white, 83 min, $38 000, English, USA.
Director: Cameron Pearson (Debut) – Producers: Cameron Pearson
& Henri Falconi – Cast: Ian Stevens, Lee Arenberg, Anel Lopez
and special guest appearance by
Cameron
Diaz
 A self-absorbed
young novelist is distracted from the political novel he’s writing by
a rocky relationship with his ambitious young girlfriend, a budding pop star,
and he drifts off into madness, ultimately retreating from the city. Boy meets
girl. Boy loses girl. Boy loses mind.
MAN WOMAN
FILM is already an intellectual cult hit and festival favorite, having
played in over twenty international festivals. Immediately available.
ABOUT
THE FILM:
MAN WOMAN FILM is an international festival hit, no-budget, American independent.
Not only is our film a refreshing antidote to Hollywood cinema regularity,
it is also a valentine to French cinema. MAN WOMAN FILM a grassroots generated,
very independent American production is both an homage and parody of French
New Wave Cinema. Designed to look like a future 1964- an Alphaville, USA –
and picture edited on a rented flatbed; this film echoes the early New Wave
genre in aesthetic form, content, and tools of construction. Our film started
out as a UCLA graduate student project that became a $35,000 "professional"
feature.
While MAN
WOMAN FILM is often a low rent comedy, it is also a stylized fantasy that
creates a sometimes beautifully realized world that is neither 1964, nor 1999;
rather: Alphaville, USA, population one. Moments of depth are treated with
a similar flare to French New Wave Cinema, and a New Wave view of current
American culture; both a nod to the historical influence of International
cinema, and a promotion of independent, experimental, do-it-yourself, movie-making.
Already internationally
renowned, MAN WOMAN FILM has now screened in festivals in Ankara (opening
night selection, official world premiere), Berlin (IFP selection), Norway,
L.A., Chicago, New York, Arizona, Amsterdam, Pittsburgh, Hungary, Estonia,
Alexandria, Egypt and Figueira da Foz, Portugal, etc….
The film, recently
shown at the Mar De La Plata Film Festival in Argentina (arguably the most
respected film festival in Latin America) was voted by the press and critics
as the seventh best film in the festival. MAN WOMAN FILM was not only the
only American film in the top ten, but it beat out such films as Bertolucci’s
"Besieged", "Boys Don’t Cry", "SLC Punk",
Tim Roth’s "The War Zone", "Twin Falls, Idaho", and
"Show Me Love".
We were in good company in the top ten with, for
example, Zhang Yuan . best director 1999 Venice Int. Film Festival, whose
film finished sixth. More recently the film has screened with "Amelie",
"Before Night Falls", " O’ Brother Where Art Thou"
and Mulholland Drive". Other movies "Man Women Film" has already
competed with at film festivals include "Run Lola Run" and "Amores
Perros". Join the thousands who have already seen this unique film.
MAN
WOMAN FILM OFFICIAL SCREENINGS
LIST:
-
Tromso International
Film Festival (Norway, 1.29,31.99)
-
European Film Market, IFP Booth (Berlin, 2.12-15.99)
-
Arizona International Film Festival (Tucson, 4.16.99)
-
Ankara International Film Festival (Turkey, 5.1,2,8,9.99) Official
World Premiere
-
Chicago Alternative Film Festival (6.12.99)
-
Los Angeles: Industry, Cast and Crew screening (7.27.99)
-
B Movie Film Festival (Syracuse, N.Y., 8.29.99)
-
Alexandria International Film Festival (Egypt, 9.17.99)
-
Figueira Da Foz International Film Festival (Portugal, 9.10.99)
-
Independent Feature Film Market (New York, 9.17-24.99)
-
Three Rivers Film Festival (Pittsburgh, 11.16,18.99)
-
Mar del Plata International Film Festival (Argentina, 11.18,24.99)
-
New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (New York,
2.10.00)
-
Mediawave International Festival of Visual Arts (Gyor, Hungary,4.28,29.00)
-
Cannes Market / Marche du Film (France, 5.10-21.00)
-
34th BAC International Film and Video Festival (Brooklyn, N.Y., 6.7.00)
-
Cinestud International Sudent Film Festival
(Amsterdam, Netherlands,
11.20.00)
-
Texas International Film Festival (College Station, TX., 2.16.01)
-
Black Nights Film Festival (Tallinn, Estonia 12.2-9.01)
MAN
WOMAN
FILM
In
The End Only One Can Be Left Standing
A parody of French
New Wave Cinema
in which boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses mind.
starring:Lee Arenberg,
Ian Stevens, Anel Lopez
and Cameron
Diaz as "a random celebrity.
Written, produced
and directed by Cameron Pearson
CRAZY LIKE THEY ARE
Documentary Feature
AN OLD WOMAN DIES A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH...
HILARIOUS!
Synopsis: An old woman dies a slow, painful,
claustrophobic death forgetten about by everyone but her 65 year-old
spinster daughter. I film them as they suffer together, as they suffer
alone, as they make each other suffer, as they make me suffer and as I make
them suffer while I film. I, the grandson, the son, the film-maker, the
prodigal abyss. Me, them, us, the dimensions of a 90 year-old grandmother's
cell. As the Parkinson's shuts down her circuits and I watch her lights go
out, she reaches out to me but I am not there. There is nothing I can do
for her, so I do nothing. I film. I help her piss. I do not feel. I do
not react. Rather, I only react. I take no action. She grows numb and
soon she will be as numb as I am. Finally, the old woman dies. It is all
very hilarious.
CRAZY LIKE THEY ARE is the story of an American family
when the film-maker's grandmother, Elizabeth Grossklaus, comes to live with
his mother, Sharon Pearson, for the last four years of her life. The
obtrusive documentary film-making style casts a cold, graphic eye on the
aging process and shows the film-maker/grandson to be ambivalent towards
those he should hold dear.
 The
story deals with the psychological patterns that had developed among the
three of them over the course of life and the impact of those patterns on
their lives as Elizabeth's draws to a close. The film is a poignant
examination of the sacrifices we make for each other and the lack of deep
personal connections that sometimes cripple our efforts at intimacy.
CRAZY LIKE THEY ARE depicts the decline of two people.
Elizabeth deteriorates physically and mentally with illness and age while
Cameron falls into a lifestyle of immature self-involvement and narcissistic
delusions, finally attempting to redeem himself through his art. Will
cinema be powerful enough to overcome the years of emotional separation and
spiritual neglect?
Director's Notes: CRAZY LIKE THEY ARE is a documentary
about the decline and death of my grandmother, Elizabeth Grossklaus. She
died of old age and Parkinson's shortly after turning 90 years-old. The
story is that of the relationship between my dying grandmother, my mother
and myself. Some of the scenes are graphic depictions of the helplessness
of old age. They are not meant to be cruel, but rather to reveal truth.
This film concerns itself with the plight of the elderly and my own
less-than-perfect response to it. Like many Americans, I did not give my
grandparents the attention I could have in the later years of their lives.
This film is an attempt to explore my indifference,
ambivalence and lack of compassion. My character functions as a stand-in
for all of us and is indicative of society. There is a black humor that
underlies the narrative. The laughs are not light, however, and the subject
matter is extremely personal and serious.
When I first screened dailies of this already
controversial movie, I was attacked for my cruelty by fellow students at
UCLA Film School. This film is a stark representation of a somewhat
"dysfunctional" relationship being tested by the most stressful and
depressing of situations; a naked vision of approaching death and crippling
deterioration that expresses a deep strain of alienation within a family
unit. The story paints a portrait of a dedicated, but exasperated daughter,
approaching 70, living with her 90 year-old mother who is slowly becoming a
vegetable. I serve as the narrator, dropping in to visit, inquisition and
record.
Ultimately, the film is about my search for meaning in my
own life and my attempts to love and reconnect with my family and myself.
While the movie is a black comedy, it is not a heartless, irresponsible
gesture on my part but a serious attempt to exercise these demons through
personal film making. I have been chronicling my grandmother's demise for
many years, since 1990, and the film is structured around me editing the
story together in 2001, putting the pieces and clips together of the film
and of my life, creating my story. The themes of this film are ultimately
not of alienation, nausea, aging and death but discovery and redemption.
It is necessary to recreate the daily reality in its slow
motion dance of agony and endurance Elizabeth resolutely went through day
after day. Through my peculiar perspective, this film is an homage and
memorial to my grandmother as a proxy for all things positive in the process
of film making and life itself: art is a redemptive process.
Producers Note: This documentary is a historical
film. For the first time, we see a product of the coming revolution is
movie making. The personal expressions made possible by today's
sophisticated and inexpensive technologies make a new world of cinema
accessible to us. The cinema of ourselves, the personal film making of
Godard and Truffaut taken one step further. The first motion picture
document of our generation's decline, through the objective eyes of one
person. CRAZY LIKE THEY ARE is the harbinger of a thousand hand-made
masterpieces. In the coming years, as a new wave of cinematic cries appear
in the wilderness, we will never look at cinema -- or ourselves -- the same
way again.
SHORT
FILMS AVAILABLE
RETURN
16 mm, color, 16 min, English, USA
Director: Cameron Pearson – Producers: Cameron Pearson
& James Azarela – Cast: Chuck Wall, Chris Travis
An existential
black comedy that prominently features crisp, philosophical human conversation
in the same dark fashion as Naked, Withnail and I, and other edgy,
verbal English classics. In this subtle film a philosophical young drifter
meets a ten-year-old boy in a deserted urban mausoleum.. Buildings, cars,
anesthesia: it’s the air-conditioned nightmare.
DZIGA
VERTOV IN NEW YORK
16 mm black and white, 8 min, English, USA
Director: Cameron Pearson – Producer: Cameron Pearson
The story
of a cameraman who becomes overwhelmed with the desperate humanity he films
on the streets of New York. Eventually, giving up his art and falling into
a silent world. The actors are real people on the streets of N.Y. This experimental
film explores archetypes from the city's deep unconscious. Told in a documentary
style, this film is a tribute to Dziga Vertov and Jacob Riis.
THE BAD HASSIDIC
16 mm black and white, 8 min, English, USA
Director: Cameron Pearson – Producer: Cameron Pearson
Cast: Henoch Ben Kalman
An extremely
black comedy about the last day in the life of a drug-dealing, gangster, orthodox
Jew. In 1992 a landmark film, Abel Ferarra’s The Bad Lieutenant, blistered
America’s screens with a shocking expose of corruption at the highest
levels of public responsibility and civic obligation. This continued betrayal
of the people by their most trusted protectors is the subject of our film.
Official
selection Raindance Film Festival 2001
CLOUDS
LEAVE A TASTE OF BLOOD IN THE MIND
16 mm, color. 7.5min, English, USA
Director: Cameron Pearson – Producer: Cameron Pearson
Cast: Chuck Wall, Todd Simmons
During a
brutal boxing match, a mediocre boxer struggles with his own incompetence
amidst lurid hallucinations, delusions of grandeur and crushing shots to the
kidneys.
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