It's a daring choice to open a film festival with a documentary about someone dying with cancer. Tuesday night aGLIFF kicked off its 24th film festival with The Lulu Sessions, an unflinching, intimate documentary about a complex woman and her equally complex friendship that defied definition.
Filmmaker S. Casper Wong was in attendance and talked about the difficulties in making the movie. Wong and Louise "Lulu" Nutter were friends when Nutter was diagnosed with cancer. Wong, who was in film school at the time, documented Nutter's experience in The Lulu Sessions, which explores their relationship over 15 years.
Like any good documentary, the story is never that simple, and through Wong's lens and discussions with Nutter, a complex, challenging, and brilliant woman easy to connect with onscreen. Nutter was a well-known cancer researcher; I had the nagging suspicion I knew something about her as the film progressed. It turns out her...
Filmmaker S. Casper Wong was in attendance and talked about the difficulties in making the movie. Wong and Louise "Lulu" Nutter were friends when Nutter was diagnosed with cancer. Wong, who was in film school at the time, documented Nutter's experience in The Lulu Sessions, which explores their relationship over 15 years.
Like any good documentary, the story is never that simple, and through Wong's lens and discussions with Nutter, a complex, challenging, and brilliant woman easy to connect with onscreen. Nutter was a well-known cancer researcher; I had the nagging suspicion I knew something about her as the film progressed. It turns out her...
- 9/7/2011
- by Jenn Brown
- Slackerwood
Director: S. Casper Wong Writer: S. Casper Wong A hard-drinking, chain-smoking, world-renowned cancer researcher with a tender heart and a mouth like a sailor, Dr. Louise Nutter -- a.k.a. LuLu -- discovered a new anti-cancer drug right around the same time that she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. The LuLu Sessions' writer-director (not to mention producer and cinematographer) S. Casper Wong was on her way to videotape a friend’s wedding in San Francisco when LuLu asked her to accompany her to her biopsy in Minneapolis. As fate would have it, the wedding was canceled and Wong opted to stay in Minneapolis with Lulu. Turning the camera toward LuLu, Wong documents the last 15 months of LuLu’s life. The camera documents as LuLu receives the dreaded diagnosis from her oncologist -- judging by Lulu's reaction this is not a reenactment. We observe several key moments during LuLu's treatments,...
- 9/7/2011
- by Don Simpson
- SmellsLikeScreenSpirit
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