Apple Pie
Directed by Sam Hamilton
Starring Calvert DeForest, Brother Theodore, Irene Cara, Veronica Hamel and Tony Azito
Shot on 16mm celluloid across parts of New Zealand and Samoa, interdisciplinary artist Sam Hamilton’s ten-part experimental magnum opus makes thought-provoking connections between life on Earth and the cosmos, and, ultimately, art and science. Structured around the ten most significant celestial bodies of the Milky Way, Apple Pie’s inquiry begins with the furthest point in our solar system, Pluto, as a lens back towards our home planet and the ‘mechanisms by which certain aspects of scientific knowledge are digested, appropriated and subsequently manifest within the general human complex’. Christopher Francis Schiel’s dry, functional narration brings a network of ideas about our existence into focus, while Hamilton’s visual tableaux, as an extension of his multifaceted practice, veer imaginatively between psychedelic imagery and performance art.
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Reviews
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★★★★★ review by Josiah Morgan on Letterboxd
NZIFF 2016//Film #6
Don't even know how to write about this so forgive me for the average review. The most important experimental work of the century so far? Maybe - frustrating that I may not get to see this ever again (at the very least not for the next few years) because Hamilton not only nails his own performance-based style but also manages to expand on traditional flicker-film orientations, whilst developing the medium of landscape filmmaking tenfold. I don't know how to sell this film to anyone - it's a journey across the universe via the avant-garde.... and it's one of the best things I've ever seen.
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★★★★ review by Erin Harrington on Letterboxd
A stoned philosophy undergrad, a Guy Maddin film and Philip Glass's 1970s Sesame Street circles meet in a bar in Samoa for an existential threesome. I was worried during the opening voiceover that it was going to go down the unrepentant self-indulgent route, but it's very sweet, a little silly and quite endearing with a great look and a killer soundtrack and by the end I was quite won over. During the credits the old guy sitting in front of me turned around and said 'well that's the queerest film I've ever seen.' Your mileage may vary.
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