Feb 21: Previewing Cameron Bruce Nelson’s ‘Some Beasts’

Preceded by the similarly ruminative short film Hang Loose, Micro-Wave Cinema gives Nelson’s Appalachian drama its Midwest premiere

In the cryptic one-sentence synopsis of Cameron Bruce Nelson’s Some Beasts about an Appalachian farmhand and a haunting woodland presence, the film draws immediate likeness to the warped Southern Gothic of Josephine Decker’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014). Both have found a home in the unpredictable Micro-Wave Cinema Series, which has regularly featured the most inventive micro-budget American filmmaking of the decade. Following an April 2015 world premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival, Nelson’s film has gradually migrated its way north, and will have its FREE Midwest premiere on Sunday, February 21, at 7:00p in 4070 Vilas Hall. Curator Brandon Colvin will host a Q&A with the director via video following the screening.

The subtle impressionism of Some Beasts‘ narrative unites a physicality in the stoic performance of Frank Mosley (director of last year’s Micro-Wave feature, Her Wilderness) as Thoreau surrogate Sal Damon, and spirituality of the earthy, picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains. Complemented by predominant use of natural light, “Hutch’s” panoramic cinematography is as initially lucid as it is darkly alluring, as the events follow a relationship’s disintegration. Seeking to return to his roots and cultivate an affinity for nature, Damon’s life is then tragically upturned once again by a sudden death in the rural Virginian community.

Rachel Gibson-Shepherd’s glowing review for Truth on Cinema celebrates the film’s fluidity that “allows us to examine Sal as a full person whilst simultaneously feeling the uneasy dichotomy of both the growing expanse of space and the shrinking ebb of loneliness.” Chase Whale’s accolades in the Dallas Observer echo these words while offering cinematic analogies to the best Southern-focused films of David Gordon Green, including his Malickian debut George Washington (2000) as well as Undertow (2004) and Prince Avalanche (2013). In characterizing the temper of Some Beasts, Nelson himself yields to Rainer Maria Rilke’s prescience: “[Things] happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.”

  • Some Beasts plays FREE on Sun, Feb 21, in 4070 Vilas Hall at 7:00p. It will be preceded by Patrick Brice and Sammy Harkham’s new eight-minute short, Hang Loose, set in the cozy California coastal town of Cayucos with indie folk artist Kyle Field of Little Wings in the lead role. For more information on the Micro-Wave Cinema Series, visit their Facebook community page.