Peggy Noland

DUST is the story of an eccentric family in crisis. Unable to move forward or functionally communicate, three change-averse siblings collide with their older brother and their own myopic worldview with comic and tragic results. The film follows the siblings Lynn, Baker and Margaret Marie as they cope with the news that their oldest brother Coke plans to move into the family home with his new wife, Patty, a woman the other siblings cannot stand. All four siblings find themselves confronted with their inability to cope with life.

In Comma Boat, we're stuck in a mock-authoritarian fantasy--a power trip. The film centers around a director-character played by Trecartin who oscillates between feelings of omnipotence and self-doubt. As if a post-human, post-gendered reincarnation of the Fellini character in 8 ½, the director gloats and frets about professional and ethical transgressions. "I know I lied to get ahead," he admits at one point. "I've made up so many different alphabets just to get ahead in my field." The director is fancier now, but the fear nags that he might be "repeating" himself "like a dumb soldier ova and ova and ova and ova." The meta-connection to the artist's own career, while obvious, is also a decoy. All art, at some level, is about the artist. Here, reflexivity is the surface level, providing a decodable veneer that encases something more unsettling and complex. Single-channel and 3-channel versions.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.