Screening

About Joe Swanberg & Amy Seimetz

Year Released:

2012

Genres:

JOE SWANBERG – WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR/ACTOR
Joe Swanberg (b. 1981) has directed the features KISSING ON THE MOUTH (2005), LOL (2006), HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS (2007), NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS (2008), ALEXANDER THE LAST (2009) and UNCLE KENT (2011). His films have premiered at Sundance and the SXSW Film Festival. He created the series BUTTERKNIFE for Spout.com and also directs and stars in the web series YOUNG AMERICAN BODIES, which he produces with his wife, Kris. It can be viewed for free on Nerve.com and IFC.com. Swanberg studied film production at Southern Illinois University where he developed an interest in emerging video technology and a crippling addiction to the Internet. Many of Joe’s films are owned by IFC Films and can be viewed on http://www.sundancenow.com/

AMY SEIMETZ – WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR/ACTOR
Amy Seimetz grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, and studied film, English literature and art history at FSU and NYU.  She has worked in independent film in a variety of capacities for many years.  She has been a producer on several notable film projects, including The Dish and the Spoon, Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melacholy and Joe Swanberg’s Silver Bullets. 

As an actress she has appeared in Swanberg’s Alexander the Last and Silver Bullets, Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, David Mitchell’s Myth of the American Sleepover, Megan Griffith's The Off Hours, and  Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way to Die, for which she won the Best Actress award at Fantastic Fest 2010.

Her latest directorial effort Sun Don’t Shine premiered in March at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, and won The Chicken and Egg Emergent Woman Narrative Filmmaker award.

In addition to independent film, Amy assisted Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan with art direction for their 2008 Glitter and Doom tour and performs regularly in an experimental comedy duo called Machu Picchu, a multi media experience once described as "Japanese game show meets Sesame Street meets Grey Gardens all riding a unicorn."

Accidental Cinema and the YouTube Sublime
Click here for an article and interview with Joe Swanberg by Brigitta Wagner, from the June 2011 issue of Senses of Cinema.