Press Kit

FILMMAKER REVIEWS:
review: "Best New Silent Filmmaker"
-SF Weekly, Best of San Francisco

"Nara Denning is the girl version of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin; her antique aesthetic is mixed with a real gift for storytelling and some tech genius. Her silent films show off San Francisco in all its blackshadowed glory, buildings tilted impossibly and neon signs glowing from every corner. Shadows and reflections are specialties, often digitally enhanced but never corny. She's obviously a fan of German Expressionism, but not a servant of it - we like the way she plays with intertitles. She also draws from an interesting pool of local talent, notably composer Stoo Odom, whose original scores help hold her silent narratives together. "
-Hiya Swanhuyser, SF Weekly

review: ("Neurotique") -The Moving Arts Film Journal

"..Director Nara Denning’s daring six-vignette production, “Neurotique” is fittingly, an expressionistic exercise in erotic neurosis. It’s German Expressionism roots, devious brand of eccentric-yet-relevant humor, and subversively surreal imagery combine to render this Neo-silent narrative compendium a wholly unique and stirringly imaginative artistic offering.

William Buck plays the central figure in each of the six shorts that comprise “Neurotique.” His sexually repressed, tepid but reactionary characterization drive the episodes with a peculiar likability veiled in an oddly familiar air of mystery. Whether a caricatured drunkard who petitions a back-alley genie for whiskey and a trio of dancing concubines, sexual prey as an unwilling sanatorium resident, the Frankenstein/Weird Science god of a mechanical sexpot robot, or a lurking safari photographer who encounters a giant jungle-goddess communing with her waterfall lover, Buck remains a charming performer capable of infusing his character(s) with depth and nuance that serves to enrich his adventures, considering even the likely interpretation that his character is intended to represent an archetype rather than a singular individual.

Denning’s measured direction, which aims to paint each frame as a freestanding work of art, combined with the wildly creative set design, classic minimalist effects, and a brilliant original score by Kevin Harp, Stoo Odom, Willy the Mailman, Marco Villalobos, and Seth Augustus recalls the innovative, unbridled imagination of silent-era French auteur, Georges Méliès, and the cryptic inevitability of David Lynch’s 1977 landmark, “Eraserhead.”

With “Neurotique” Denning artfully protests the prevailing attitudes of the tech-driven, meretriciousness of modern commercial filmmaking, and demonstrates, like Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece, “Raging Bull,” that the entirety of a film’s mise-en-scène, regardless of existing technologies or techniques, should be determined largely as an element of artistic discretion.

Denning wields that discretion confidently and comes away with a titillating and uncompromised exploration of the expansive and mysterious lacuna of sexual desire and the elusive nature of identity."
-Eric M. Armstrong, The Moving Arts Film Journal

review: ("Madalien the Small")
"Nara Denning's stunning modern spin on a Lumière Brothers-esque silent film Madelien the Small was a crowd favorite, following the eponymous protagonist as she tries to find a place for herself in the big city. The visual effects, according to cinematographer Oliver Ferrasci, were done all by Denning as she chain-smoked in front of her Mac. Now that's dedication. You can watch the short courtesy of IMDbhere." -hyphenmagazine.com

ARTIST STATEMENT
I began as a visual artist and became intimate with the use of symbols in my work.
I regard film in the same way. I can expect to spend a great deal of time on a single shot, -I regard that shot as a fully realized moving painting.

ABOUT NARA DENNING
Born in San Francisco in 1976, Nara Denning is among a new crop of filmmakers coming out of Bay Area. Denning combines influences of German Expressionism and the experimental film style of early Surrealists to breath new life into the concept of video and carry the legacy of "cinépoem" -fusing poetry and motion picture, into the future.