Iconoclastic director Harmony Korine unveiled what may be one of the most twisted spring break movies in recent memory with a screening heralded by a roving motorcade of scooter drivers in bikinis and ski masks and lasting into the wee hours Monday at the South by Southwest film festival.
“Spring Breakers,” positioned as both a celebration and an indictment of the annual bacchanal, follows four bikini-clad college students through a series of improbable adventures. After financing their excursion to the Florida coast with a robbery, the young women descend farther into the criminal underworld than intended.
The movie has been highly anticipated thanks to a widely viewed online trailer showing former Disney starlets transformed into heavily armed, lightly clad mean girls bent on having a good time at all costs.
As the venue for a domestic premiere, the promoters chose South by Southwest, held in the college town of Austin.
Asked whether the whole affair should be read as satire, Korine said, “I more want you to have a physical experience.”
And the movie?
“It does have its cake and eat it too,” said James Franco, the wide-ranging actor best known as a villain in the Spider-Man series and starring as a cornrow-headed thug in “Spring Breakers.”
The film also features Selena Gomez, the 20-year-old pop music singer known as Justin Bieber’s ex-girlfriend and for her role on Disney’s now defunct “Wizards of Waverly Place.”
When the lights went down, Korine’s fever dream of gunplay, body shots and girls gone wild found a receptive audience.
In a Q-and-A session, an audience member asked Korine about the open-ended final scene.
“I end it there because I want you to dream on it,” he said, adding, “Why do you want to be told everything all the time?”
SUPERLATIVE Signs Director Claudia Abend For Spots and Branded Content
Latin American director/editor and documentary filmmaker Claudia Abend has joined SUPERLATIVE for her first U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content.
Abend's empathetic docu-style POV has garnered several international awards for the documentary films Hit (2008) and The Flower of Life (2018). Her spotmaking credits include such brands as Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. SUPERLATIVE has already worked with Abend, together producing a new ad campaign for digital agency Tinuiti and The Honest Company, a consumer goods corporation featuring eco-minded products.
“We found Claudia through her poignant documentaries on the festival circuit,” said SUPERLATIVE creative manager Stefan Dezil. “We are excited about her textured narratives, emotional storytelling, and her powerhouse long-form storytelling abilities, currently on her third feature film. As SUPERLATIVE continues to build our brand after premiering our latest films at Sundance and SXSW, Claudia is the kind of multidimensional artist we are excited to partner with on branded content and beyond. Fluent in English and Spanish, her reel shows real prowess with infants, food and skin products, families both young and old. Great visual storytelling and inspirational doc work.”
Abend began her career in her native Uruguay, studying film and editing in college. “My dad would show me films like Citizen Kane,” she said. “I love cinema and became an editor. It was here that I learned all about communicating human emotion.”
From the get-go, Abend hit it big as a documentary director, teaming with Adrianna Loeff on Hit, a movie chronicling pop artists of Uruguayan music. Abend took home a Best Editing... Read More