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Event
Penny Lane
NUTS! is the mostly-true story of John Romulus Brinkley, a Kansas doctor who in 1917 discovers that he can cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles into men. From there, the story only gets weirder.
Using hand-drawn animated reenactments, interviews, archival footage, and a seriously unreliable narrator, NUTS! traces Brinkleys rise from poverty and obscurity to the heights of celebrity, wealth and influence. Along the way, he transplants thousands of goat testicles; amasses an enormous fortune; is (sort of) elected Governor of Kansas; builds the worlds most powerful radio station; and generally annoys the heck out of the establishment. Doc Brinkley led an audacious life in which he conned everybody and made a disgraceful amount of money. The film shows how he did it, and what happened when it all came crashing down.
Once all the twists and turns of Brinkleys story are revealed NUTS! definitely earns its title. But its more than just a colorful biopic with a great story. NUTS! reminds us that, more than any other human quality, it is our love of and need for compelling narratives that makes us so endlessly susceptible to being conned. We believe the stories we want (or need) to believe, and we believe anyone who tells them to us. Con men know this. So do politicians, pitch men, propagandists, cult leaders, pick up artists and manipulators of all kinds including documentary filmmakers.
"NUTS!" is a provocation to the status-quo of documentary storytelling. It uses an outlandish story as an opportunity to question how truths can be invented by crafty storytellers, and what responsibility nonfiction filmmakers have to reveal the tricks of their craft.
Penny Lane was named one of Filmmaker Magazines 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2012. Her debut feature-length documentary, Our Nixon, world premiered at Rotterdam, had its North American premiere at SXSW, won the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival at Ann Arbor, and was selected as the Closing Night Film at New Directors/New Films. The film is currently in wide distribution, and has aired on CNN, ARTE and many other television outlets worldwide. Pennys films have also screened at AFI FEST, Antimatter, IMPAKT, Images Festival, Oberhausen, FLEX FEST, Hot Docs, Full Frame, Rooftop Films, MoMAs Documentary Fortnight and many other venues.
Her second feature-length documentary, NUTS!, world-premiered in competition at Sundance in January 2016 where it won a Special Jury Prize for Editing.
She has been awarded grants from Creative Capital, Cinereach, TFI Documentary Fund, Jerome Foundation, LEF Foundation, NYSCA, Experimental Television Center, IFP and Puffin Foundation. She was named Most Badass! at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival in 2009.
She received her MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her BA in American Culture and Media Studies at Vassar College. She has taught film, video and new media art at Bard College, Hampshire College and Williams College. She is currently a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University, where she lives in a very old house and shows movies in her barn when she is not working on her upcoming feature documentary NUTS!. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.
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LocationThe Sanctuary for Independent Media (View)
3361 6th Avenue
Troy, NY 12180
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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