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Creative Nonfiction podcast

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Creative Nonfiction #5: Penny Lane on Confessions of a Good Samaritan and playing with form

In the fifth and final episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season, Penny Lane discusses her experiments with form in Confessions of a Good Samaritan. This interview was conducted at HotDocs 2023.

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Podcast Episode 5: Penny Lane on her experimentations with documentary film form in Confesssions of a Good Samaritan. Penny Lane is pictured (top right) and a screenshot of her desktop in the film is pictured below.
Episode 5: Penny Lane on her experimentations with documentary film form in Confesssions of a Good Samaritan. Penny Lane is pictured (top right) and a screenshot of her desktop in the film is pictured below.

On episode 5 of the podcast season, Penny Lane discusses her new documentary film, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, about her journey to becoming an anonymous kidney donor and its emotional repercussions. While educating us on the kidney donation process and why it’s important, the film is, above all, a portrait of the filmmaker in crisis. It is equally a film about making a film about donating a kidney.

Lane uses many different techniques to get us inside her stressed and complicated brain: inviting us onto her desktop, showing us interviews with herself, documenting the donation process with cameras, and even curating archival footage and interviews to reflect the state of mind of the ‘character of Penny Lane’ as she develops through the film.

Penny Lane has been experimenting with film form throughout her career, from the archival footage film Our Nixon, to the animated documentary NUTS!, to the tongue-in-cheek look at the Satanic Temple in Hail Satan? through seemingly conventional talking head interviews, to found footage in The Pain of Others, and beyond. Lane weaves almost all of these techniques (and a few more!) into Confessions of a Good Samaritan, offering a thoughtful, educational, and funny look at the complicated feelings that come with doing good in the world.

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Listen to the whole Creative Nonfiction season

In this 5-episode podcast season, Alex Heeney interviews four creative nonfiction filmmakers about their latest films and how they are pushing the boundaries of what documentary and nonfiction film can be.

Listen to all the episodes to discover how filmmakers are pushing the bounds of documentary cinema in 2023.

Subscribe To the podcast now

Show Notes for Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Penny Lane on Confessions of a Good Samaritan

Get our ebooks on documentary filmmaking and creative nonfiction film

Dive deep into the work of Frederick Wiseman and Gianfranco Rosi and read our initial interview with Penny Lane on creative nonfiction by getting Documentary Masters in a bundle with Subjective Realities: The art of creative nonfiction film.

Get the bundle now
Cover of Subjective Realities, which features an interview with Penny Lane who appears on the podcast to discuss her new film Confessions of a Good Samaritan.
Cover of Subjective Realities, which features an interview with Penny Lane who appears on the podcast to discuss her new film Confessions of a Good Samaritan.

Download a FREE excerpt from Subjective Realities here.

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The Seventh Row Podcast spotlights under-the-radar, female-directed, and foreign films. All of our episodes are carefully curated. Indeed, we only discuss films we think are really worth your time and deserve in-depth critical analysis.

Our episodes that are more than six months old are only available to members. In addition, many of our new episodes are for members only. 

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Related Episodes to the podcast Penny Lane on Confessions of a Good Samaritan

Related Episodes on creative nonfiction film

Listen to all the related episodes. Become a member.

All of our episodes that are more than six months old are only available to members. Additionally, we have many bonus episodes and in-between season episodes which are also only available to members.

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Credits

Host Alex Heeney is the Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row. Find her on Twitter @bwestcineaste.

This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.

Episode transcript

The transcript for the free excerpt of this episode was AI-generated by Otter.ai.

[fusebox_transcript]

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Creative Nonfiction #4: Sam Green on live documentary and 32 Sounds

In the fourth episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season, Sam Green discusses his film 32 Sounds and the live documentary.

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Episode 4: Sam Green (bottom) in his live documentary film 32 Sounds which he discusses on the podcast. The poster of 32 Sounds in a circle frame (top right). Sam Green is holding a microphone inside a sound-dampened room.
Episode 4: Sam Green (bottom) in his film 32 Sounds and the poster of 32 Sounds in a circle frame (top right)

On episode 4 of the creative nonfiction podcast season, Alex Heeney talks to Sam Green about 32 Sounds and his work exploring the possibilities of his work that he describes as “live documentaries”. These are part locked footage, part live performance, usually including a live band on stage performing the film’s music.

On this episode, we give some background on Sam Green’s work in live documentary, talk about how A Thousand Thoughts (2018), co-directed with Joe Bini, felt like a turning point for his work in the form, and discuss what makes 32 Sounds such a wonderful and innovative film. Finally, Alex talks to Sam Green about making 32 Sounds, and more broadly about how he thinks about live documentary and why this is a space he likes working in.

The episode features a conversation between Alex Heeney and Orla Smith about 32 Sounds and live documentary, recorded in January 2022 right after the world premiere of 32 Sounds. The interview with Sam Green was conducted via Zoom in January 2022 the day after 32 Sounds had its world (virtual) premiere at Sundance. This is an edited version of the complete conversation; the complete conversation is available on our website here.

About Sam Green’s live documentaries

Green’s first live documentary was Utopia in Four Movements (2010), which had its world premiere at Sundance 2010. He then did The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller (2012), which Alex Heeney saw at its world premiere in San Francisco. Director-editor Joe Bini, whom we interviewed about live documentary in our ebook Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction, also saw the film in SF. This led to Bini and Green collaborating on the Kronos Quartet live documentary A Thousand Thoughts (2018). 32 Sounds is Green’s first live documentary which was also designed for a home viewing experience.

About 32 Sounds, which we discuss on the podcast

On the Seventh Row podcast, Orla Smith described 32 Sounds as the “feel good film of the festival”. It’s an immersive deep-dive into how sound makes us feel and how we process sounds. It asks us to consider the sounds we encounter all the time and don’t notice, the sounds that mark our memories, and how we create sound. Its vignette structure was loosely inspired by 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (François Girard, 1993). 32 Sounds certainly contains more than thirty-two sounds, though the selected ones are occasionally tallied for us. It is alternately lighthearted — explaining sound waves with a whoopie cushion — and deeply contemplative, as when Green dreads listening to the answering machine recordings left by his late brother.

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Creative Nonfiction Podcast season featuring an interview with Sam Green on his live documentary 32 Sounds

Listen to the whole Creative Nonfiction season

In this 5-episode podcast season, Alex Heeney interviews four creative nonfiction filmmakers about their latest films and how they are pushing the boundaries of what documentary and nonfiction film can be.

Listen to all the episodes to discover how filmmakers are pushing the bounds of documentary cinema in 2023.

Subscribe To the podcast now

Show Notes for Creative Nonfiction Podcast Season Ep. 4: Sam Green on 32 Sounds and live documentary

Show Notes on creative nonfiction

Get our ebooks on documentary filmmaking and creative nonfiction film

Subjective Realities contains interviews with filmmakers Joe Bini (Little Ethiopia) and Zia Anger (My First Film) on their work on live documentary. Joe Bini also co-directed A Thousand Thoughts with Sam Green, and then continued to make his own live documentaries with his wife, Maya Daisy Hawke.

Dive deep into the work of Frederick Wiseman and Gianfranco Rosi and read our initial interview with Penny Lane on creative nonfiction by getting Documentary Masters in a bundle with Subjective Realities: The art of creative nonfiction film.

Get the bundle now
Cover of Subjective Realities, a great introduction to creative nonfiction films that precede Falardeau's documentary Lac-Mégantic

Download a FREE excerpt from Subjective Realities here.

Never miss an episode again. Become a member.

The Seventh Row Podcast spotlights under-the-radar, female-directed, and foreign films. All of our episodes are carefully curated. Indeed, we only discuss films we think are really worth your time and deserve in-depth critical analysis.

Our episodes that are more than six months old are only available to members. In addition, many of our new episodes are for members only. 

For exclusive access to all of our episodes, including all of our in-between season episodes, become a member.

Become a Member Now

Related Episodes on creative nonfiction film

Listen to all the related episodes. Become a member.

All of our episodes that are more than six months old are only available to members. Additionally, we have many bonus episodes and in-between season episodes which are also only available to members.

For exclusive access to all of our episodes:

Become a Member Now

Credits

Host Alex Heeney is the Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row. Find her on Twitter @bwestcineaste.

This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.

Episode transcript

The transcript for the free excerpt of this episode was AI-generated by Otter.ai.

[fusebox_transcript]

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Ep. 123: Sundance 2022: Creative nonfiction

Alex & Orla discuss the highlight of Sundance 2022: creative nonfiction. We discuss active listening, reframing history, and a risk-taking volcanologist couple.

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Four stills from creative nonfiction films at Sundance22, clockwise from top left: Director Sam Green holidng a boom mic in 32 Sounds; a man tends to an injured black kite bird in All That Breathes, a woman wearing a scarf and sunglasses in Framing Agnes, and volcanologist in front of a lava flow in Fire of Love
Clockwise from top left: 32 Sounds; All That Breathes, Framing Agnes, & Fire of Love
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Ep. 106: Christine and Kate Plays Christine: Reviving Christine Chubbuck

We discuss Christine and Kate Plays Christine, a fiction and documentary film about Christine Chubbuck. We ask, what’s the value of telling a story in fiction versus nonfiction?

This episode is a Seventh Row members exclusive, as are all episodes older than six months. Click here to become a member.

Left: Rebecca Hall as Christine Chubbuck; Right: Kate Lyn Sheil as Kate Playing Christine

This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, and special guest Lena Wilson.

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Click here to become a Seventh Row member and get access to this episode, as well as all other podcast episodes older than six months.

Christine (Antonio Campos, 2016)

Christine follows Christine Chubbuck, played by Rebecca Hall, in the weeks leading up to her death. At the news station where she works, her boss Mike, played by Tracy Letts, is pressuring the reporters to favour blood and guts television over less sensationalised news stories, which Christine prefers. As the pressure mounts at work, in Christine’s romantic life, and with her relationship with her mother, she eventually comes to the decision to kill herself on air.

Christine is streaming on Netflix in Canada, Hulu in the US, and is available on VOD in Canada, the US, and the UK

Kate Plays Christine (Robert Greene, 2016)

 For his documentary Kate Plays Christine, Robert Greene has created a fictional construction — that he’s shooting a fiction film about Christine Chubbuck — in which to make a documentary film about an actor’s process. He follows Kate Lyn Sheil, who will be playing Christine, as she attempts to understand the woman she’s playing and get into character. Through costume and wig fittings, and interviews with experts and people who knew Chubbuck, Sheil gets increasingly frustrated by her inability to totally understand the woman and why she did what she did. She also gets frustrated by the movie she’s preparing to star in, wondering why it exists in the first place?

Kate Plays Christine is streaming on Kanopy in Canada, Hoopla and Fandor in Canada and the US, and is available on VOD in Canada, the US, and the UK

On this episode

  • Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film (2:34)
  • Why we paired these films and the Christine Chubbuck story (5:18)
  • The mid-2010s trend of men making movies about how bad men oppress women (10:04)
  • Christine (15:16)
  • Rebecca Hall’s performance (21:50)
  • The strange questions the film asks (30:50)
  • The Florida perspective (35:03)
  • The 1970s (38:35)
  • Kate Plays Christine (41:36)
  • The film’s ending (59:52)
  • Blame on authorship and viewership (1:07:51)
  • Conclusion (1:19:19)

Show notes

  • Purchase Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction film for more on Robert Greene, the casting conceit in creative nonfiction, and much more.
  • Purchase tickets for August 29th’s livestream conversation between Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Bisbee ‘17) and Joe Bini (editor of twenty-seven Werner Herzog films).
  • Read Alex’s interview with Penny Lane about Nuts!
  • Read Miriam Bale’s essay in The New Republic on Christine and Kate Plays Christine
  • Read why Kate Lyn Shiel gives one of the best performances of 2016.
  • Ep. 68: Mothers struggling with addiction in Hillbilly Elegy and Down to the Bone (Members Only)
  • Ep. 67: Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris and City Hall (Members Only)
  • Ep. 12: Hail Satan? featuring director Penny Lane (Members Only)

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Creative Nonfiction Bonus Episode

For the last year, we’ve been planning a book and workshop series around creative nonfiction. Find out how and why we adopted this term to describe a distinct genre of documentary films on this creative nonfiction bonus episode.

Film Adventurer Members get a weekly bonus podcast episode with their subscription. We released this bonus episode in June. To receive more episodes like this and much more, please subscribe, for only $39.99 (Canadian) per year.

[Read more…] about Creative Nonfiction Bonus Episode