I’ve written a couple of times about my love of the 2013 Oscar-winning short film Curfew, written/directed by Shawn Christensen (he also starred in it). I saw Curfew when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2012 and thought it was superb. My review here. During Tribeca, I tracked down Christensen and interviewed him. (Turns out, I was the first person to interview him about Curfew! It was rather an amazing situation, to see this short film move on over the next year, playing the festival circuit, racking up awards, building a huge audience. It then won the Academy Award for Best Short Film. Here’s Christensen accepting the Award.)
So here we are now, and Christensen has turned Curfew into a full-length feature called Before I Disappear which opens on November 28. I watched a screener of it and shared my thoughts here. His vision is strange and hallucinatory, and yet he has an indestructible sweetness to his vision … it’s one of the reasons why I respond to his work so strongly.
Shawn Christensen, “Before I Disappear”
Shawn Christensen and Fatima Ptacek, “Before I Disappear”
Shawn Christensen and Fatima Ptacek, “Before I Disappear”
I highly recommend checking out both Curfew (available on iTunes) as well as Before I Disappear when it opens. I am very interested in Christensen’s visual style, and who he is as a director. He has a great eye.
I was very pleased to talk with Christensen again about Before I Disappear.
