In recent years American filmmaker Ted Fendt has made a name for himself on the festival circuit, thanks to his drily comic, anthropologically sharp films, predominantly set in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In this first retrospective and Dutch premiere of Fendt’s work we dive into the elegance of his early episodic miniatures in which Fendt’s cinematic web of surrealist humour and emotional texture unfolds. His non-professional performers are oozing spontaneity and mystery in their everyday encounters, when attending house parties, drinking cheap beers in dive bars with arcade games clamouring in the background, culminating in Fendt‘s debut feature Short Stay, in which an antihero pizza delivery guy offers to fill a sublet for a sleazy “friend“. Rigorous in his materiality, he prefers shooting in lived-in domestic spaces with a minimal crew, mostly natural light, using direct sound on analogue film stock. A journey into an unconventional cinematic mind.

Filmmaker Ted Fendt will be present for both days of his retrospective and in conversation with Marius Hrdy after each program.
 

Interviews with Ted Fendt:
Berlin Film Journal
Cinema Scope

Infinite Minds: The Cinema of Ted Fendt 2 :
https://amsterdamalternative.nl/agenda/6725