Documentary Production and Distribution News

Featured Documetary: The Parking Lot Movie

By Staff
posted Oct 18, 2010, 17:19

Featured Documetary: The Parking Lot Movie

Hailed as the "most feel-good film" of the South by Southwest Film Festival, director Meghan Eckman's irreverently funny debut celebrates a brotherhood of eccentric attendants who man a unique parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia. From grad students to middle-age slackers, indie-rock musicians to surly philosophers, these overeducated part-timers wax profoundly about car culture and capitalism, seek vengeance against entitled patrons and thieves, and make fun of drunken jerks.

Over three years, Eckman filmed the comings and goings of the characters who man the attendant's booth at the lot, hearing their theories and observing their behaviour.

Former attendants, including James McNew from Yo La Tengo, may have moved on, though their time at the lot has clearly provided rites of passage and afforded them Zen-like perspective. The Parking Lot Movie is warmly playful, hilariously funny and disarmingly perceptive. Anyone with experience of working in the service industry while harbouring dreams of bettering themselves will be able to relate.

If the intersection between the status quo and the quest for freedom is their ultimate challenge, could a slab of asphalt be an emotional way station for The American Dream?

Resources:

http://www.theparkinglotmovie.com/