REVIEW—Pater Noster and the Mission of Light By Wade Sellers

The entire cast carries you through the film, but Bickel’s tongue-in-cheek record store comedy turned blood-soaked escape film pays off in a great way that I haven’t seen in any level of filmmaking in quite some time. 

Mike Amason stars as Pater Noster in Pater Noster and the Mission of Light

Simply put, Chris Bickel knows how to hit you in the face with his movies. His third micro-budget indie feature, Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, is a wonder of what pure will, a solid vision, dedication from indie-film lovers, new technology, and a load of talent can create in the current indie-film world. An end card after the credits states that Pater Noster and the Mission of Light was made in West Columbia for what you can buy a used car for. Bickel gives that number as $20,000. Every dollar of that budget ends up on the screen along with pints of blood and sweat from a crew that found a labor of love, and a cast that is both seasoned and practically pulled off the street. 

On the surface Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is a cult film. Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is a 70s religious group that has been off-the-grid for decades. What they do have is a slightly sought after catalogue of self-produced music that is worth a lot of cash to collectors. That’s how we meet Max, played by newcomer Adara Starr. Max works at the local indie record shop when a local vinyl trader tries to cash in one of his Pater Noster records and not so subtly mentions that he has a secret spot where more of the Pater Noster catalog sit. Max sweet talks and slips the collector a few bucks and hits the store herself, hoping to cash in. Max does find the stash and heads back to the record shop with her PNATMOL find. 

After bragging to store owner Sam, played perfectly sly and bitter by Bickel regular Morgan Shaley Renew and her co-worker and friend Abby, played smartly by another familiar face to Bickel films Sanethia Dresch, Max and Abby head to Max’s house to get high and soak in the Pater Noster find. Later, the co-workers hit a blood-soaked show featuring a local thrash metal band “Lunacide,” filled in by Columbia area band and Metal Blade recording artist Demiser. Filling out the group of friends is Gretchen and Lunacide drummer Jay Sin, played by Shelby Lois Guinn and Josh Outzen, respectively. Bickel’s curation of this group is a great homage to past horror film friend group dynamics. The friends head back to Max’s for a post-show afterparty. Max finds a mutual Pater Noster lover in Jay Sin and the Mission of Light mystery grows from there. With a brilliant cameo by the saxophone swinging 80s film icon Tim Cappello as Dennis Waverly, a conspiracy filled radio host leaning heavily on Art Bell, the friends get a stern warning of swimming in the Pater Noster pool. Moments later, another mysterious call is received from supposed Pater Noster surrogates, and the next morning the friends are in a car being chauffeured to the Pater Noster compound.

He mixes his blood with the blood spilled later in the film.

Bickel wastes no time getting his group of friends, and the audience, into the meat of the white robed, smile just a bit too wide, Pater Noster welcoming committee and their compound. Soon getting us in front of reclusive Pater Noster himself. Mike Amason plays Pater Noster, and brilliantly chews every line of dialogue Bickel gives him through to the end of the film. Once the friends enters the interior of the Pater Noster compound, that’s when Bickel starts cocking his fist further back, readying it for the audience’s face. 

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light’s greatest strength is Bickel’s growth as a filmmaker and growing chops as an editor. His willingness to inject a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek humor in the first half of the film also loosens up the audience for the bloodbath to come. He mixes his personal experiences working in a local indie record store with locally known Columbia fixtures, name play, and street addresses that will only resonate with locals. This makes the movie better because it adds Bickel’s personal roots with his loosely fictional settings and characters in the films. He mixes his blood with the blood spilled later in the film. 

Adara Starr stars as Max in Pater Noster and the Mission of Light

As the film gets into its 20th minute, the pacing seems to slow a bit- not boring, but methodical. Make no mistake Pater Noster is a micro budget B-Movie, but Bickel doesn’t rush the story. With B films there is pressure to get the blood before the eyes of the audience as soon as possible. And that audience is quick to give up and walk away. Bickel does a fantastic job of allowing us to know what we need to know with each of the characters as we get to the first level of the last act. 

Technology is the other advantage Bickel has with his third film. The visual look of the first half of the film is what it needs to be, nothing fancy, straightforward. There is no pretention here. When we move into the insanity of the third act, Bickel starts to flex the experience he has gained from his previous two features. Losing his Director of Photography two weeks prior to the first shoot day, Bickel took control of the camera himself. For a movie with a decent budget this can be incredibly stressful, for an indie horror feature with a 20k budget and 100 or so volunteers, off and on, crew members, you lose years off your life.  

Visually the last act is a bit of a marvel. Lit just enough to set the tone but not distract, the direction and camera work create an atmosphere of insanity. Bickel’s slow(ish) pacing at the top of the film is balanced with a frenetic pacing at the end. Somehow, he makes this digestible. Add a soundtrack of aural horror and everything blends into a beautifully psychotic escape sequence by those left alive. He successfully takes the audience into the maddening world that Capello’s radio host warns us about. Yes, there is blood. Gallons more than in previous Bickel films. But as the deaths mount when the Pater Noster cult reveals their true intentions, and their naked bodies, the audience can only grip their seats tighter and move closer to the screen. I viewed the film at a private screening with a small audience of 25 or so. We all gleefully soaked it in with the slyest grins on our face. 

A last-minute addition for the lead role, Adara Starr brilliantly turns Max from a cherub faced 20 something into a Carrie-esque crazed young woman over the film’s 90 or so minutes. All other supporting friends make the most of their life-or-death moments with no fear. Intentional or not, Bickel’s casting of the round-faced Starr contrasts her beautifully against her sharply featured friends.

This is the type of indie movie that is possible now. The camera that Bickel used is affordable to everyone. It allows capturing beautiful images in low light. It allows a filmmaker with Bickel’s experience and talent to create the horrific moments he makes in this film. Would a larger budget have served him well, of course. But how much larger? These movies aren’t made for a wide audience. They certainly are made with a pure love and Bickel’s love for the medium is caked all over Pater Noster. You can see Tobe Hooper and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre here. You can see some Rosemary’s Baby mixed in with Friday the 13th, even a taste of Clerks (if unintentional). And you can imagine the many gruesome horror titles that Bickel knows, and we don’t, that he is wearing on his sleeve at every part of the production process. 

Morgan Shaley Renew, Adara Starr, and Shelby Lois Guinn in Pater Noster and the Mission of Light

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is a wild punch in the face of a horror film, and I suggest seeing it no matter your taste in movies. It’s a testament to the new way filmmakers can make the film they love in the city or town they live in. The entire cast carries you through the film, but Bickel’s tongue-in-cheek record store comedy turned blood-soaked escape film pays off in a great way that I haven’t seen in any level of filmmaking in quite some time. 

The Nickelodeon’s indie film roots no longer exist in this city and it is time to seek other outlets.

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light has its world theatrical premiere at the Independent Picture House in Charlotte on October 5th. The film is mixed in 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. It will stream on Night Flight during the month of October. 

The film features a soundtrack created by musicians local to Columbia, South Carolina. Prior to the film’s release, Bickel premiered music videos for each song of the soundtrack. These videos will be available on the Blue Ray release in 5.1 Dolby. An 18-minute short film prequel will also be included on the Blue Ray. 

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is premiering in Charlotte, North Carolina and not Columbia. The Charlotte premiere is due to the Nickelodeon Theatre, located on Main Street in downtown Columbia and Bickel’s preferred theatre for the premiere, not being able to find time in their schedule to screen the film. There has been a lot of back and forth through social media about this situation, and reasonable arguments can be made from both sides. 

As an independent filmmaker who has made his living as a filmmaker in Columbia for 25 years, my take is simple. You can’t be taken seriously as a supporter of independent filmmakers and independent films in the city you operate if you don’t have a plan in place to screen local filmmakers and their work at a reasonably short moment’s notice. 

No film on the Nickelodeon’s current schedule starts past 9:30pm. Pater Noster is a perfect midnight film. The first showing in Charlotte, 100 miles away, sold out in a few hours. The Nickelodeon has deep roots in the independent film community in this city. It is where most local filmmakers, including myself, first saw their work on a theater screen. The Nickelodeon staff should be seeking out and celebrating local filmmakers. The answer should not be “we won’t have room for a few months” but should be “we will make this work.” I would gladly like to pop my head in to a 9:30 screening of Beetlejuice 2 on an upcoming Monday screening to count heads. The Nickelodeon’s indie film roots no longer exist in this city and it is time to seek other outlets.

 

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light 

Written and directed by Chris Bickel

 

Starring

Adara Starr as Max

Sanethia Dresch as Abby

Morgan Shaley Renew as Sam

Shelby Lois Guinn as Gretchen

Josh Outzen as Jay Sin

Mike Amason as Pater Noster

News & ARTIST CALL from Indie Grits

indie grits general Indie Grits Film Festival, the Southeast’s premier film and culture festival in Columbia, S.C. for DIY media-makers, will take place April 15-19, 2015, and for the first time, the festival will have a theme: “Future Perfect.” Additionally, 2015’s Indie Grits is calling for visual artists whose work will enhance Columbia’s public spaces during the festival for a multi-faceted exhibit, thanks to funding by an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

The ninth annual Indie Grits, hosted by the Nickelodeon Theatre, South Carolina’s oldest art-house cinema located on Main Street in South Carolina’s capital city, will feature five full days of the best DIY short, experimental, animated and student film, music, food and outside-the-box artistic performances from South Carolina and the Southeast. Indie Grits has twice been named one of MovieMaker magazine’s Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World.

 

“Forty percent of attendees from last year’s Indie Grits lived outside of Columbia, and we want to do more to attract even more out-of-town participants,” said Seth Gadsden, co-director of Indie Grits Film Festival. “Our participant and attendance numbers are growing each year, but folks tell us again and again that they want to be able to attend more Indie Grits events while they’re in town. So a five-day format will concentrate all the events you’ve come to love about Indie Grits, plus some events we’re adding, like our brand-new call for artists. We’re hoping a jam-packed festival will mean that more people will bring a critical mass to downtown Columbia during Indie Grits.”

 

Indie Grits Calls for Visual Artists

Indie Grits 2015 will build on the artist-in-residence program sponsored by One Columbia for Arts and History, which began at 2014’s Indie Grits and brought artist Amanda Cassingham-Bardwell and her installation art to the festival. The artist-in-residence program will return to Indie Grits 2015, and thanks to an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the festival seeks proposals from artists inspired by the Future Perfect theme for the festival.

 

Indie Grits seeks installations, sculpture, video, photography, mixed media and any kind of art that speaks to the theme of the festival. Indie Grits will accept 15 – 25 artist applicants for exhibition at the festival. Indie Grits will provide accepted artists and collaborations with modest financial support to facilitate materials, shipping, installation and some other incurred costs, and projects will receive up to $1,000. Projects will be displayed throughout the 2015 festival in various locations downtown Columbia, including Tapp’s Center for the Arts. For more information and the application, visit indiegrits.com/submit/art.

 

As always, Indie Grits Film Festival will continue to focus on offering audiences opportunities to see the best new films coming from independent Southern filmmakers with a far-reaching, experimental scope during the festival. Additionally, festivalgoers will enjoy other favorite events like the Spork in Hand Puppet Slam, a concert at the Columbia Museum of Art and the Slow Food at Indie Grits Sustainable Chefs Showcase.

 

For more information on Indie Grits, visit www.indiegrits.com or contact Seth Gadsden, festival co-director at Seth@IndieGrits.com, (803) 254-8324.

Review: The Uncomfortable—and Beautiful—Intimacy of Blue Is the Warmest Color by Alexis Stratton

blue is the warmest color  A lot has been said and written about Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013), the award-winning French film by director Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. The film has been hailed as a masterpiece in many circles—an unrivaled love story between two women. Others have criticized the film for its extensive (but, for some, oddly clinical) lesbian sex scenes or on the representational problems of the female characters. But criticism aside, within the context of this three-hour film about growing up, growing passions, and growing losses, these intense images of intimacy and embodiment only make sense. Because if Blue Is the Warmest Color is anything, it’s a portrait of intimacy.

Blue Is the Warmest Color draws us into the protagonist Adele’s life in Lille, France, from the first shot, and plunged into her world, we barely come up for air until the end. At the forefront of the film is this almost-claustrophobic closeness to Adele, the teenage protagonist who comes of age and explores her romantic and sexual identities throughout the course of the film. The film gives us the story of La vie d'Adèle (“The Life of Adele,” the original French title of the film), but to do so, it focuses not only on the rising passions between her and Emma, the college-aged art student she falls in love with, but also on the minutiae of  Adele’s daily living. The film takes us into the private, the close, and the closed—revealing to us what the world doesn’t see yet all that Adele experiences. We see what happens behind the closed doors of Adele’s life—stolen kisses with a classmate in the school bathroom, disappointing sex with a boyfriend, an almost-wordless family dinner, with only the sounds of eating and the occasional “Would you like some more?” breaking the silence.

These intimate acts are revealed to us first by their mere existence—shots of Adele sleeping peacefully, Adele and her girlfriend Emma engaging in passionate sex. However, we are not simply voyeurs; the frequent closeups and no-holds-barred sound editing bring us into the scenes as if we were a part of them. We are brought so close to these daily acts that they are almost ugly—the sloppy chewing, noisy kissing, red-faced crying. In fact, in one of the first dinner scenes, I felt myself cringing at the slurping of spaghetti, and in almost every scene where someone cried, I was taken aback by the actresses’ running noses (the friend I saw the film with mentioned later her intense desire to wipe Adele’s snot away).

However, perhaps it’s in this “ugliness” of life that the beauty and warmth of the film come in. On one hand, the film is lusciously shot and skillfully edited, with carefully chosen color schemes and shooting techniques and angles that bring a simultaneous beauty and intensity to even the rawest of scenes. On the other, by taking the time to portray those “ugly” and seemingly small moments, Kechiche brings our focus to the “real” moments that are often deemed unimportant to a narrative—but in which most of our living occurs. (Rumor has it that Keciche even had the characters read the script and then forget the lines, encouraging them toward the approximation of "realness" that improvisation allows.) 

And perhaps the discomfort I felt are part of what the film so wonderfully accomplishes. From the director’s distinctive choices about what to reveal to the rawness of the actresses’ stunning performances, perhaps the closeness and intimacy become too real and too close—revealing the audience’s own issues with intimacy, the body, and communing with others. Perhaps filmgoers have become so used to the clean and the aestheticized that such rawness is meant to make us uncomfortable—and is meant to make us connect to the characters in a way that is notable in its rarity.

Blue Is the Warmest Color offers a closeup on Adele’s lived experience and the intimacies that many struggle with and work for. We are her shadow, and her, and we are so close to her that the classmates’ laughter around her rings in our ears, that the painful memories of ex-lovers are in our minds, that the women’s growing passions and broken hearts are our own. For those few hours in the theater, La vie d'Adèle became mine, and as she walked away, the camera for once not following after her, I felt her life and story slip away from me, too—an intimacy once shared and now gone. - Alexis Stratton

Blue Is the Warmest Color. Drama. Starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. In French with English subtitles. (NC-17. 179 minutes.)

At the Nickelodeon – Jan. 31-Feb. 6

Jasper/Nick Shakespearean Sonnet Contest

shakespeare Shakespeare wrote 154 of them –

            You ought to have at least one in you.

 

“All the world's a stage,” William Shakespeare wrote, “and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

The question is: would you like to play the part of a poet?  Jasper Magazine and the Nickelodeon Theatre want to cast you in that role.

Announcing The Jasper Magazine – Nickelodeon Theatre Shakespearean Sonnet Contest, presented in conjunction with and in celebration of the Nick’s upcoming Forever and A Day: Shakespeare Film Adaptation Series, which will feature screening of movies based on Shakespearean plays. (Titles, dates, and details TBA soon.)

In addition to his stage plays, Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, and Jasper think that means you must have at least one in you.  What's a sonnet?  Jasper hears your high school English teacher sighing deeply somewhere in the distance, but here's a quick refresher:

14 lines of iambic pentameter.  That's fancy Greek, shoehorned into English, for 10 syllables per line, each with a short-long beat.  Example:  "The bumblebee was flying through the air," which sounds like "the BUMble BEE was FLYing THROUGH the AIR" when you read it aloud. Or "The Nick and Jasper Magazine are cool!"

The first three verses have to have an ABAB rhyme scheme, so the first and third line lines rhyme with each other, and so do the second and fourth. Example:

I saw a cat

Which saw a dog;

I wore a hat,

Because of fog.

And then the final two lines must rhyme with each other. 14 lines total, no more, no less. Google "Shakespearean Sonnet" if you need details or further examples.

The topic can be anything you wish, and up to three entries per person will be accepted.

DETAILS:

  • Deadline is Sunday, December 8th.
  • The winning sonnet will be published in Jasper Vol.  003, No. 003 (which will come out on January 16th, 2014) and will also be read at the opening reception for the Shakespeare Film Adaptation Series.
  • There is no fee to enter.
  • Do NOT put your name on your entry.
  • DO include a cover sheet with your name, e-mail  address, and the name of your sonnet.
  • Send entries to Editor@JasperColumbia.com with “Sonnet” in the subject heading.

Intimidated?  Don't be.  Just let your words flow “trippingly on the tongue,” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet. “Let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”

 

Have fun, and Jasper looks forward to reading your compositions!