Episode 12 welcomes our first director guest to the podcast. Penny Lane discusses her new documentary, Hail Satan?, about the political activism of the Satanic Temple, with Seventh Row editor-in-chief Alex Heeney and associate editor Brett Pardy.
About Hail Satan?
Hail Satan? follows the rise of the Satanic Temple, a religious movement and social activist group with a wicked sense of humour. We discuss with director Penny Lane what attracted her to the story, her thoughts on how to responsibly portray the film’s subjects, and her filmmaking process from concept to editing. Hail Satan? was shot over two years and represents the first film for which Lane shot original on-the-ground footage rather than working with archival footage or developing animated sequences. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Show Notes and Recommended Reading related to Hail Satan?
Hail Satan? continues to expand across the United States and Canada
For more information about Penny Lane and her projects, visit her website: https://pennylaneismyrealname.com/ and follow her on Twitter.
Alex interviewed Penny in 2016 about her film Nuts, which chronicles the life and work of Dr. John Brinkley, who made his name by transplanting goat testicles into infertile men, making liberal use of animated re-enactment. An excerpt of the interview is available here.
Our interview with Penny Lane on NUTS! is available as part of the eBook In Their Own Words: Documentary Masters Vol. 1, which also includes interviews with Sophie Fiennes, Steve James, Joshua Oppenheimer, Alanis Obomsawin, D.A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman, and more. The book is a carefully curated selection of our best interviews and features some of the most talented documentary directors from around the world, each with different (and sometimes conflicting) approaches and opinions. It will change how you think about documentaries and whether there’s any “right” way to make them. Find out more here.
This episode on Hail Satan? was edited by Edward von Aderkas.
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