Flipside (2024)
Director: Chris Wilcha Run Time: 91 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2023
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
World Premiere, 2023 Toronto International Film Festival
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. Flipside (2024) documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive–a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.
“A borderline-profound and philosophical expression of satisfaction with everything that is unfinished in life.”
—Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter
About the filmmaker:
Chris Wilcha won two Emmy awards and two International Documentary Association Awards for directing and co-executive producing a TV version of Ira Glass’ acclaimed radio show This American Life for Showtime. He has also directed promos, pilots and short films for MTV, PBS, Sundance Channel and TV Land, including The Social History of the Mosh Pit (2002) and Second Hand Stories (2005). Wilcha also directed and shot a first person video diary called The Target Shoots First (2000), about his tenure in the marketing department at the mail order CD and tape club Columbia House in the early 1990’s. The Target Shoots First (2000) won awards at numerous festivals including SXSW and Slamdance, screened internationally, and was broadcast on Cinemax and The Sundance Channel.
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