Look Again. Jan 19 – 29, 2012 Park City, Utah

After an elderly hospital patient dies, a nurse tries unsuccessfully to contact the next of kin. Later, a social worker continues the effort but finds only the neighbor who was feeding the patient’s dogs. A county investigator fails to locate any relatives and ultimately must process the belongings in the decedent’s home. Meanwhile, we follow a frail man’s discharge from the hospital and an older woman’s day spent running errands and trying to stay cool during a heat wave.

Laurence Thrush’s wistful Pursuit of Loneliness underplays conventional dramatic elements in favor of heightened aestheticism—gorgeous, fixed-frame, black-and-white compositions; a disquieting score by experimental media composer William Basinski; and a cast of nonprofessional actors. Thrush’s precise vision, with its detached, observational quality, passes fluidly among the characters and emphasizes routine, bureaucracy, and a sense of anonymity. With a heartbreaking awareness of impermanence, we watch the artifacts of a life—pets, belongings, memories—reduced to paperwork. We also find ourselves aware of the one thing that appears nowhere in the film—family. - J.N.

Laurence Thrush
growthfilms@aol.com
Pursuit of Loneliness
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In 2008 Laurence Thrush directed Tobira no muko (Left Handed), a Japanese-language film on the subject of hikikomori (social withdrawal). The film won an award for best feature at the Milan, Rhode Island, L'Aquila, and Japan film festivals and screened in competition at Rotterdam. Left Handed is distributed by Vanguard Cinema. Pursuit of Loneliness is Thrush’s second film as writer and director. It was shot entirely in Los Angeles and produced by Ken Hanada through Growth Films.