Medicine for Melancholy

WE CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THIS














"Clip this article. Put it on your refrigerator to remind yourself, your roommates, your friends and family to see Medicine For Melancholy… In the face of an impending cultural extinction and the potential loss of SF’s soul, this excellent movie is part of a necessary discussion.”

-D. Scot Miller, San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Part mood piece, part awkward love story, and part sociological exposé, San Francisco writer-director Barry Jenkins’ debut feature is some kind of wonderful. This is the rare film that is as thoughtful as it is sensual, as attuned to personal epiphanies as it is to social injustice. “

-Michael Fox, SF Weekly

“Visually more sophisticated than the bulk of features to yet come out of the new wave of DIY independent American cinema, narratively smoother and yet still boundless in mold-breaking ambition, Medicine for Melancholy offers a self-contained rebuttal to claims that precious, naturalistic dramas about the existential dilemmas of hipster singles are exclusively a white man’s game.”

-Karina Longworth, Spout

“Stunningly photographed… Medicine for Melancholy is an appealingly modest film with two strong lead performances (by Wyatt Cenac and, particularly, Tracey Heggins), and a beautiful sense of balance; it never presupposes that the romantic possibilities of its two illicit lovers are more important than the social reality Jenkins quite deftly embeds them in.”

- Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine

“Enlightened and tenderly beautiful…easily my favorite film at SXSW 2008.“

- Aaron Hillis, Premiere

“Medicine For Melancholy is an ambitious achievement on many different levels: formally, aesthetically, dramatically, intellectually. It is destined to stand as one of 2008’s most impressive and highly accomplished low-budget dramas.”

- Michael Tully, Hammer to Nail

Here's a great article from IndieWIRE magazine.

indieWIRE PROFILE "Medicine For Melancholy" Director Barry Jenkins

by Eugene Hernandez (September 14, 2008)


"We stopped seeking validation and just went out and made the movie," filmmaker Barry Jenkins explained last week in Toronto, sitting down to chat a bit about his first feature "Medicine For Melancholy." A Toronto International Film Festival Discovery section title, the acclaimed fest circuit film, acquired over the summer by IFC Films, is launching IFP's Independent Film Week on Monday in Manhattan after winning the audience award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and hitting a number of other fests. A low-budget indie feature set in San Francisco, the film follows two people during the 24 hours after they meet and hook up. It's about, in Jenkins' words, "the naivete of the morning after. Trying to forge an emotional connection from a physical act."


"The movie kind of spun out of my first functional, interracial relationship," Jenkins elaborated, reflecting on the movie on a day last week when he spent hours talking to the press. As the young folks at the center of his story -- Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey Heggins) -- get to know each other better the morning after, they ponder Bay Area gentrification, talk class politics, and butt heads over race in a way that feels quite timely. In short, they expose and judge each others identities in ways evolve naturally.


"It's really about economics, it's about status, class," Barry Jenkins added, elaborating his own "post-race" point of view. "I think the movie is really about getting to that point." He spent three weeks writing the script for a film that was inspired, in part, by Claire Denis' 2002 film, "Friday Night" (Vendredi Soir). But, "I am not Claire Denis!" he cautioned. "It could be set in Chicago or New York," he added, but in setting it in San Francisco, he uses the film as a way to explore the city and two of its residents at a particular moment.

"I would love for other filmmakers to be inspired by our film," Jenkins said, reflecting on the fact that "Medicine for Melancholy" would kick-off the IFP events this week. He was inspired by the work of the so-called Mumblecore filmmakers, namely Chris Wells and Joe Swanberg and their 2006 film, "LOL." After befriending Wells at the Telluride Film Festival, where Jenkins is still an annual staffer, Jenkins admitted that he was rather floored when Wells told him that he and Swanberg had gone and made a low-budget feature.

"I went to film school, I thought I was a decent filmmaker, I just couldn't make films -- nobody would give me the money or the time or the access," elaborated Jenkins, an '03 graduate of Florida State. Fed up with with trying to find the cash to make his own films, Jenkins decided to take the D.I.Y. approach pursued by Wells and Swanberg. Which essentially lead him to the festival home base for the so-called Mumblecore set, Austin's SXSW Film Festival. IFC came knocking after catching up with the film this Spring, tipped by filmmaker (and IFC staffer) Chris Wells.

Now repped by CAA and recently named to Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces in Independent Film, like other emerging filmmakers Jenkins is hoping to work with a larger palette in the future. "I don't think there is a single filmmaker that I've met on the circuit who doesn't want access to better tools," Jenkins added, "All we could afford to do was two people walking and talking. But turns out, that's all this story needed."

indieWIRE's coverage of IFP's 208 Independent Film Week will continue throughout the week in our special New York section.




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