leah
meyerhoff |
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Leah
is an artsy American.
When
the story is as good as filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff's, you can't help but
be drawn in.
Meyerhoff,
a Bay Area native and third-year graduate film student in Tisch, has plenty
of success stories to put on her resume: On top of being featured in the
popular series "Film School" on IFC, her latest film, the poignant
and poetic short "Twitch," rocked the Slamdance Film Festival.
“Twitch”
is a story about fear, love and an uncertain future ... Writer/director
Leah Meyerhoff has secured her place in film with this short movie...She’s
done a story that is as honest as it is touching, and there is nothing
sickly sweet about it. Her ability to sum up a young girl’s life
in ten minutes is remarkable, and it makes the film.
Twitch
tells the poignant story of a young girl torn between two worlds: her
domestic life where she must care for her wheelchair-bound mother and
her escape into the emerging world of sexuality with her eager, hormone-addled
boyfriend. Concerned that her mother's disability is contagious due to
her own twitching leg, the young girl seeks out advice from her gynecologist
who feebly allays her fears. The director's own mother, a victim of MS,
plays the mother with a stark reality that is haunting to watch, and Emma
Galvin, who plays the daughter, captures the girl's struggles with an
understated command that belies the hidden turmoil of adolescent angst
that tortures her character.
So
many short films seem to pound ideas into our head over and over again,
as if to make the message as clear as possible through noisy repetition.
Twitch, though, seems to let the message lie just underneath the surface,
waiting to be discovered. I enjoyed many things about the film, but I
think I mostly enjoyed the performance of the young actress, who acts
in subtle ways that indicate great tension between her character and the
character of the mother. Here is also a movie that uses editing in profound,
yet simple, ways to move the story forward without wasting time... Great
job and please continue making films that rely on the intelligence of
the audience to move the story forward.
There's
Leah Meyerhoff, 24, an eccentric from Oakland, Calif., whose film will
help her face down demons collected from a childhood spent taking care
of her wheelchair-bound mother with MS.
Young
filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff writes and directs this short film that so far
has won almost universal accolades on the festival set...The film unfolds
without exposition, instead following (a) young teenager through a series
of snapshot scenes, detailing her increasing neurosis that perhaps her
mother's disability is contagious. As the girl begins to believe that
she, like her mother, will lose the use of her legs, the gulf that divides
mother and daughter widens...It's a strange, insular take on growing up
and rings with the veracity of real-life experience...Twitch is a hard
but impressive little film. The travails of growing up, the immense pain
of post-adolescence, the terror of the big nasty world resting just outside
our windows: Twitch augers in the universal places of hurt in the human
brain. We can take solace that Meyerhoff is now working on her first feature-length
film. Twitch shows great promise; we now must wait for Meyerhoff's talents
to fully bloom.
For Meyerhoff, reaching millions has very little to do with personal recognition but rather entirely to do with her desire to affect social change. It’s idealistic. Lovely.
Tisch
alumni Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese and "Monster's Ball"
director Marc Forster make cameo appearances, but the real stars are unknowns
like 24-year-old Bay Area native Leah Meyerhoff, who tries to make her
autobiographical feature in Oakland after casting her own mother to play...her
mother.
Interview
with Leah Meyerhoff, director of Twitch
Leah,
24, is a punk-aesthete visual-artist Brown grad who includes blond wigs
and black eyeliner among her conceptual guises. Her project: a therapeutic
film that relives through drama her stressful relationship as a teenager
with her wheelchair-bound mother, a victim of multiple sclerosis.
Leah
Meyerhoff explores some interesting and complex territory in Twitch. A
young woman burdened by her mother's crippling ailment begins to develop
the hypochodriacal belief that she is contracting her mother's disease.
Obsessive bathing does little to abate her fears as she is forced to deal
with her issues.
Meyerhoff
has the talent to rival the likes of Catherine Breillat in her ripe observations
regarding the battle of the sexes.
Remember
Van Halen’s 1984 video for their adolescent anthem “Hot
for Teacher?” Well, Team Queen is its queer, feminist doppelganger.
Meyerhoff's
film, "Twitch," is a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl
who's resentful about taking care of her mother, who has multiple sclerosis.
Their complex, fractured relationship is based on Meyerhoff's own experience
with her ailing mother, who she casts in her film.
Twitch
is a powerful and unsentimental autobiographical film about the conflicted
and complicated relationship between a teenage girl and her disabled mother
(played by Meyerhoff's own mother Toni). Meyerhoff easily conveys the
neuroses and brutality attendant to an enforced reversal of roles: when
the line between caregiver and charge is hopelessly blurred.
An
interview with director Leah Meyerhoff at the Milan Film Festival
An interview with filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff about the personal nature of her short film Twitch, her experiences working as a female director, and the inside scoop on her upcoming feature Unicorns
At its core, Twitch makes far more subtle points about shedding norms and other’s expectations, by portraying a pivotal moment in one young woman’s transition into adulthood and coming into self in an unsentimental, non-deterministic fashion.
Interview with Reel NY.
“Twitch”
tells the true story of Meyerhoff, who spent her teenage years taking
care of a disabled mother with multiple sclerosis. The film reveals the
challenges Meyerhoff faced while caring for her ill mother as her own
life blossomed.
Leah
Meyerhoff's short "Twitch," which screened at the Chicago International
Film Festival, stars Emma Galvin as a teen afraid she's acquiring the
disability that afflicts her mother, played by Leah's own mother Toni
Meyerhoff. Leah Meyerhoff, a former Art Institute student, garnered a
Student Academy Award nomination and a Slamdance Grand Jury Prize for
"Twitch." The short has played more than 30 fests, with upcoming
screenings in Sweden, Wales, and New York.
Here
is a brief interview with Leah Meyerhoff, one of the filmmakers associated
with the "Into the Limelight" program.
I
really enjoyed this short and hard-hitting movie. Dark, mean spirited,
and all. Twitch grabs the emotions and fears we all share and makes more
of a statement than the director may have ever intended.
(Twitch)
shows a self-centered, scared girl looking in vain for the wrong things
from the people in her life: she seeks physical affection from her mother,
who can only offer emotional connection; she wants her boyfriend to listen
to her and validate her feelings and fears, but all he wants is sex...Shame,
though, that you'll only get to see it once through -- it rewards multiple
viewings.
Video
interview
with Leah Meyerhoff at NewFest
Award-winning
director and New York University graduate student Leah Meyerhoff has built
up a large list of accomplishments as a filmmaker, including a number
or awards, and appearances at such festivals as the Cannes International
Film Festival in France, Slamdance, and the Chicago International Film
Festival.
This
colorful romp in high school antics and edginess is a wild ride
of a music video.
Filmmaker
and nightlife entrepreneur Leah Meyerhoff is the director of the titillating
Team Queen music video ... and the audience will no doubt be encouraged
to participate in tawdry and unexpected ways.
This
extemely well-done music video for the band Triple Creme has been
playing the underground film circuit all year long ... First of
all, it’s a really great, catchy song and the video is a
throwback to good, old-fashioned music videos when music videos
used to tell a story and were, most of all, fun. The “story” is
slight: a “good girl” is horrified by her outrageous
classmates until she finally joins them in all their orgiastic
excess. Best part: the transvestite cheerleaders.
This music video is colorful, and the surrealism is a nice perplexing touch.
The
band paired up with director Leah Meyerhoff to set the video in a gender-bending,
fire-breathing, tassel-twirling, post-punk rock 'n' roll prom starring
the best of New York Burlesque.
Post-punk
lez rockers Triple Creme enlisted the brightest and most buoyant of New
York's burlesque scene to star in the new music video for their single
"Team Queen." Relentless schtick-slinger Murray Hill hosts the
single's launch party, featuring a live performance by Triple Creme and
supporting boylesque and burlesque acts such as Tigger and Julie Atlas
Muz, while roller derby stars, drag queen cheerleaders, magicians, and
a girl in a large balloon keep the night, ah, afloat.
They’re here, they’re queer, and they’re ready to rock.
The grrrls in the post-punk Brooklyn band Triple-Crème are not
afraid of a little heavy bass or some catchy guitar riffs. They’re
also not afraid to kick your ass.
photo
spread p64 of The Summer Issue
In
her first day at a new school, a clean-cut princess tempts her teacher
with an apple, and then wanders nervously through high school halls. Cut
to her crashed prom, where the queer-punk-rock band Triple Crème
bangs out a song, a leather-bound burlesquer breathes fire, and drag-queen
cheerleaders dance delightedly in blue satin sports bras.
photo
spread from the Santa Cruz Film Festival
The
Team Queen release party was hectic and crowded in the exact way a good
party should be. The turnout was pretty staggering, and all kudos due
to director Leah Meyerhoff, who managed to put the whole show together
herself. People were packed in body-to-body to watch us shake our collective
asses, and the music video is incredibly well-done.Yay for D.I.Y. women.
Leah Meyerhoff's "Wonderfluff Sanwiches", uses plastic wrap and duct tape in her film about sandwich-making, leather ladies, and 1950's housewives. Leah
Meyerhoff, the founder of DollHouse Gallery, created an art space in her
apartment because (she) was interested in creating an alternative to the
standard white cube, wine-and-cheese sort of gallery.
Other
artists take war and terrorism as themes...The politics are less specific
in a video of Leah Meyerhoff packaging herself in plastic wrap. watch the Twitch trailer download hi-res Twitch stills visit Leah's myspace profile watch the Team Queen trailer download hi-res Team Queen stills
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