Frownland

Catalog No.: FTF-001
Label: Factory 25
Release date: September 29, 2009
Director: Ronald Bronstein
Length: 107 minutes
Year: 2008

Frownland Standard DVD: $24.95 $20.00

Frownland LTD LP/DVD Edition: $34.98 $30.00

Frownland Digital Download: $8.00

Tech Details: English, Color, 16mm, 1.66:1 Widescreen, Dolby Digital, NR, NTSC

Special Features:
The Dregs: foul snippets of 16mm footage dubiously scraped off the cutting room floor. Sure to diminish one's overall impression of the work proper!
Dung Heaps of Compulsion: Excerpts from an insufferably long-winded email exchange between Keith and Charles. Chicken-hearted desperation vs. rank contempt. Nobody wins!

Limited Edition will include:
Original Soundtrack on Vinyl: A ludicrously self-indulgent vinyl edition of actor/composer Paul Grimstad's queasy score. Devised to gather dust and take up unnecessary space in your small apartment.
Don't Look at Me: A smudged-to-shit, hand scrawled mini-comic drawn by Laura to degrade (and justify her abject alienation from) the cretins inhabiting her highschool. Basically, a collection of mean-spirited drawings of people that don't even know she exists. Pathetic?
The Dregs: foul snippets of 16mm footage dubiously scraped off the cutting room floor. Sure to diminish one's overall impression of the work proper!
Dung Heaps of Compulsion: Excerpts from an insufferably long-winded email exchange between Keith and Charles. Chicken-hearted desperation vs. rank contempt. Nobody wins!
Movie Poster: On glorious newsprint. Put it in the sun and watch it yellow!
Certified Garbage: A random scrap of celluloid from the original 16mm work-print. Buy several thousand copies and reconstruct the entire film!

 

Synopsis

First-time director Ronald Bronstein describes his extraordinary film as “a rotten egg lobbed with spazmo aim at the spotless surface of the silver screen.” Be forewarned: audience response has been intensely divided. Frownland has garnered both passionate raves and scathing denunciation, while festival screenings have ended in screaming matches between patrons. It is strong stuff, yes, but none of its notorious reputation does justice to its savage dark humor, emotional heft and stylistic audacity. Above all else, Frownland is a pitch-black character study of Keith Sontag (Dore Mann), a neurotic, manipulative, stridently unlovable New Yorker whose pitiless roommate aptly describes him, to his face, as “a burbling troll in his underwear.” With the most basic elements of human communication a struggle, Keith lurches his way through an uncaring city, attempting to aid a suicidal friend, evict his unctuous roommate, and simply attain some measure of self-respect. An apoplectic seizure of blind rage, sorrow and bleating humor...Frownland.

 

Press

"This is personal cinema at its most uncompromising and fierce."
- Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“When US independent film has become so drab, marching on Sundance to better reach Hollywood, it is high time it regained the essence it lost twenty years ago...This is the reason why Frownland is so important”
– Cahiers Du Cinema.

"One of the most unusual and audacious American independent films ever made."
- Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“There is some kind of demented brilliance at work here”
- Scott Foundas, The Village Voice

"A horror film nearly as creepy as Eraserhead and more unsparing."
- Amy Taubin, Film Comment

"Frownland is like a shriek for help. It centers on an extraordinary performance that plays like an unceasing panic attack. To call it uncompromising is to wish for a better word."
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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