Los Angeles Film Festival

Camera, Camera

plays with Madagascar, a Journey Diary

(USA, 2009, 60 mins, HDCam — Frame Rate 23.98)

World Premiere

Executive Producers: Malcolm Murray, Michael Meyer, Josh Haner
Producer: Josh Haner
Screenwriter: Michael Meyer
Cinematographer: Malcolm Murray
Editor: Malcolm Murray
Music: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, James Blackshaw, Explosions in the Sky

A sharp, subtle critique on the nature of tourism and photography, the enigmatic documentary Camera, Camera follows a handful of diverse Westerners traveling through Laos, paying special attention to the snapshots they take along the way. Making his feature-length debut, director-cinematographer Malcolm Murray has created a tone-poem about this Southeast Asian nation’s seductive hold on outsiders, introducing us to college kids looking to party, old men seeking easy sex, and professional wanderers trying to find their place.

With the help of writer/interviewer Michael Meyer, Murray’s film becomes a profound rumination on people’s desire to escape themselves by venturing into seemingly exotic foreign lands cut off from the conventions of Western society. Though a gorgeously-shot portrait of Laos’s idyllic, mysterious beauty, this documentary ultimately questions the reliability of images and the motives of sightseers, examining how a traveler’s camera or a filmmaker’s lens ends up distorting its subject’s meaning, transforming untouched locales into representations of the outsider’s own experiences and desires. By exploring the politics behind wanderlust, Camera, Camera is a travelogue that packs a sting.

Tim Grierson

Expected to attend: Malcolm Murray and Mike Meyer

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