Highlights from the True/False Nonfiction Film Festival
A podcast, an interview, and another interview, oh my!
Dear Last Thing I Saw fans,
It seems like forever and a day ago since I went to the True/False Film Fest in 2020, just before the first shutdowns of the pandemic. Happily I was able to come back this year—there being Columbia, Missouri—for the 2022 edition, and I found the town’s nonfiction film community in fine fettle, thriving with stimulating selections from all over the world.
So on the latest episode of The Last Thing I Saw, I talk with curator and critic Eric Hynes, a longtime True/False attendee, about some highlights from the forefront of documentary filmmaking. This two-part edition of the podcast then features an interview we conducted at Columbia’s Ragtag Cinema, with Joe Hunting, who directed the innovative documentary We Met in Virtual Reality, about how you shoot a movie that’s set entirely in the visual world of VR.
As an added bonus, I’ve rescued something I wrote a while back from the memory hole of the pandemic: an interview with the director of So Late So Soon—a modest, touching documentary about two long-married artists in Chicago, which is now available on streaming.
I’ll have more articles and interviews to share in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening and supporting The Last Thing I Saw!
Nic
NEW PODCAST NOTES
True/False 2022 with Eric Hynes + Interview with Joe Hunting about We Met in Virtual Reality (Episode 109)
Eric Hynes is curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image.
Joe Hunting is the director of We Met in Virtual Reality.
You can also read my Artforum report about True/False here.
For more information on the podcast’s opening and closing music by The Minarets (gratefully used with permission):
Follow the band on Instagram
@theminaretsmusic
RECENT WRITING
An Interview with Daniel Hymanson, Director of So Late So Soon
When I went to True/False in 2020, I saw and loved So Late So Soon, a movie about a married couple, Jackie and Don Seiden, both artists. Their Chicago house doubled as a studio, strewn with string or suitcases or other objects from Jackie’s installations and other projects. The director, Daniel Hymanson, captures the loving dynamic between Jackie and Don, with a wonderful ear for the rhythms and casual poetry of their conversation, without turning them into adorable eccentrics. Hymanson knew Jackie for years, because she was his art teacher in grade school. I spoke with him on that 2020 visit to Columbia, Missouri, in a cacophonous wine bar. Since Oscilloscope Films picked up So Late So Soon during the pandemic, I’m happy to share our chat for the first time here. You can stream the movie here.
How old were Jackie and Don when you started making the movie?
I’ve always said 80 and 90 [years old]. But Don said he was 90 years old for a number of years.
He’s just always 90.
Yeah! [Laughs]
Did you know that this project would turn into a full feature?
I thought I was going to spend three months on it and then it evolved into this whole thing. I’m from Chicago, so I finished college, moved back home, and started this, thinking it’d be a short project, a short film. Over the course of about six months, I filmed interviews with Jackie about her house and about her teaching, her history. I didn’t show anyone any of the footage and I edited a 60-minute film that was completely incomprehensible. When I had a little distance, I saw it didn’t reflect what I loved about Jackie and why I enjoyed spending time with her. So I decided to go back and do something bigger.
The movie is so good at capturing the textures of how she and Don talk, and these ongoing stories in their lives that they keep coming back to.
Yeah, the footage we were drawn to were the moments that capture some part of the essence that was their conversation. For Jackie, there are these stories that I’ve heard a million times, and that are repeated in her artwork. There are these narratives that are reflected in her assemblages and images throughout the house. We were trying to reflect that also in how the film is edited. I’ve always loved her artwork—I think it’s so cool, I think it’s beautiful and when I was a kid I remember loving it.
You get a sense of an artist at work. I love when she’s pecking away at a computer montage and asking Don for input.
The process! I love those slideshows. He takes it very seriously. Sometimes I find it so amazing that they found each other. Two people found each other who make different types of artwork but it’s similarly integrated into their lives. They never had any kids together, though they both have [prior] children.
How do they support themselves?
Don founded this school of art therapy program at the Art Institute of Chicago, so for many years he was a professor of art therapy and sculpture and education. Jackie was a vintage store picker. She would go to all the thrift stores and pick things she liked. She had a store called Split Personalities in Rogers Park in Chicago for a while where she’d sell these big sculptured dolls.
How did you schedule out filming with them?
I would come over for a few hours a day from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., twice a week. They had dinner very early. We’d all have dinner together at 3 p.m. That was our schedule for a while. There would be periods where Jackie would want to pause filming for a little while because the camera was getting annoying, so we would pause for a couple months. Over the course of two years, with breaks, I spent more time with them during that period than anyone else in my life, no question. During the edit, I went back a number of times, not shooting.
Could you explain the title, So Late So Soon?
We had a working title that I felt didn’t work anymore. A couple months ago, I was looking through their work for inspiration, like, what does Jackie name things, what does Don name things? So I took out a book of newspaper clippings that Don kept over the years. One of them was something like, “Don Seiden has won third prize at an art contest” and it was from around when he was about 30, my age. It was a sculpture of an older man who looked like him, and it was called So Late So Soon.
I think Don got the title from a very short Dr. Seuss poem:
How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it’s afternoon,
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
I just think it’s such a beautiful poem. Don died about six months ago, and Jackie and I had been talking about titles for a long time. I liked the idea of him also titling the film.
Jackie is so good at articulating her fears, about their relationship and generally, even if she doesn’t have an answer. Like when she’s wondering aloud about nursing homes: “Do I let you go?”
She’s so able to communicate what she’s feeling all the time. It’s really special. Throughout filming we’d occasionally get into arguments and I would be like, she’s just so much better! I would be struggling. I’m often not very good at figuring out what to say. And she’s so funny.
Were there moments she wouldn’t want filmed?
For the most part, it was more the camera is getting annoying rather than something too sensitive. I couldn’t really predict. But when I first started shooting, I would show Jackie footage right after. And what she would be angry about would be, like, a black broom in the back of the shot. She doesn’t like black in the house because it’s very light and there’s a very specific color scheme: taxicab yellow, sea-foam green... If there was something else in the back of a shot, she might say, “Oh, you can’t use that shot.” So I thought, “This film will never happen!” [Laughs]
Finally I wanted to ask you about movies that inspire you. Have you seen the Ross McElwee documentary, Charleen?
I fucking love that movie so much! Yeah. There are definitely some Jackie similarities. There’s an edge to Charleen and to Jackie.
I see it! Any others you like?
I like, for very different reasons, A Married Couple and [more] Ross McElwee movies. Obviously those are different films than the digressions that I’ve taken. I also think of Gates of Heaven or Vernon, Florida. I watch a lot of nonfiction.
I love how Errol Morris captures the very particular ways people talk and where their trains of thought take them.
Yeah, there’s that famous shot from Gates of Heaven where a woman is talking from that step and she stops talking about the animals and goes off on this thing. It was a point where I was like, “This means it’s okay to go in a totally different direction if it feels right.”
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
Delectable selections for home viewing.
Sweet Smell of Success (Criterion) “Match me, Sidney.”
El Planeta (HBO MAX)
I Am Not Your Negro (MUBI)
Private Property (Criterion)
Sorry to Bother You (Netflix)
Chronicle of a Summer (Criterion)
THE END
Here I may end with a song.
ABOUT ME
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! Nicolas Rapold speaking.
Besides hosting this podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival dispatches, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Sight & Sound, Artforum, Filmmaker, and W Magazine (and appeared in dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine).
I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment, where I was for 15 years. I assigned and edited both web and print editorial, hosted its podcast and talks and screenings, learned from brilliant writers, curated Film Comment Selects, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment was subsequently awarded the Film Heritage Award by the National Society of Film Critics (an honor historically awarded to the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions).
Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc.
nicolas.rapold@gmail.com