UNCLE KENT w/ Joe Swanberg Live

The first of Swanberg’s films to premiere at Sundance, UNCLE KENT is an exploration of romance and lust, and the strange way it has been impacted by contemporary Internet technologies.

Frequent Swanberg collaborator Kent Osborne (who, somehow, got his start writing SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS) stars as an animator who languishes his life away in his workspace/apartment, smoking pot and sitting as his computer.  He spends his nights on Chatroulette, sketching strangers and their protuberances before they can “next” him.

His malaise is broken by the arrival of a beautiful weekend guest, a nubile young woman who he knows only through the webcam site.  From there the film journeys through a minefield of sexual tension, made all the more troublesome by their participation in a “casual encounter” post on Craigslist.  The New Yorker critic Richard Brody describes it as “Swanberg’s warning to the video generation (his own): If you mediate your life, as Kent does, you will not live it.”

The film rings true as a piercing tale of sexual ambiguity and confusion, examining the ways that our behaviors and conceptions of sexual connection can and have been altered by technology.  (Daniel)

This series is sponsored in part by the Austin Film Society.  They will be hosting a Moviemaker Dialogue with Swanberg on Saturday, June 4 at Austin Studios.  For more info, visit their site.