Screening times:
Friday, June 21, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Saturday, June 22, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Chris Wilcha | Documentary | USA | 2023 | 96m
with Judd Apatow, Uncle Floyd, Ira Glass, Herman Leonard, David Milch, Chris Wilcha
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. Flipside documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years while he was making a living in advertising and starting a family.
In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth and personal catastrophe, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to Uncle Floyd, a local New Jersey cable television hero and pop-culture curiosity, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and Deadwood creator David Milch. Oh, and Judd Apatow also features prominently.
This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life. Flipside is a quintessentially Gen X vision exploring the melancholy troughs and the unexpected joys of coming of age at a time of austerity, and finding a connection with artists at different stages of their journey and achieving a kind of communion. The film provides understanding Wilcha only recognizes in hindsight his collection of failures and incomplete work holds a potent thematic throughline.
Also, this is a fantastic documentary for collectors of physical media. Vinyl lovers will feel right at home at Flipside.
"Wilcha breezily excavates why life can feel so full of promise while also being frustratingly incomplete. He folds in a message of gratitude that tints this sneakily affecting movie with a forgiving sense of color and light." -Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
"Strikes one of those wonderful paradoxes, being simultaneously about holding on and letting go." -Amber Wilkinson, Eye For Film
"Taken in totality and with some reflection, it’s a borderline-profound and philosophical expression of satisfaction with everything that is unfinished in life." -Daniel Fienberg, Hollywood Reporter
Tickets $8.75 ($8 cash at the door if available).
Half capacity
Half capacity
