created by: kat tingum and produced by: ginger spark productions
Directed Episodes “Good things come to those who hustle”
and “stand tall and persevere”

When a forgotten relic reunites two exes, they must come to terms with the drastically different directions their lives have taken. Then, they try again.

This film was developed and executed in a very collaborative manner. We had received a residency through the wonderful folks at Barn Arts Collective in Bass Harbor, Maine, and the three of us challenged ourselves to come up with a story we could shoot, edit, and screen (a rough cut, that is), in the space of a single week. Inspired very much by the late Abbas Kiarostami's workshops, we began with the location first and let that everything develop from there. Somehow we struck on the idea of a former couple who meets up, one of them having recently transitioned, and how that interaction might develop over a single day in this small coastal town. Once we arrived on Mount Desert Island, we had to react to the available locations and the fickleness of the weather -- the fog rolling in was an unexpected blessing that added a lot of atmosphere and tension. In one instance, we had written a scene in a lobstering boat. Sitting in Brooklyn, it was the first image that came to mind about the lobster industry. But once in the town, we found out a lot more about how that industry works and met incredible people who allowed us to shoot at their lobster processing plant-cum-restaurant. We sought a kind of documentary quality to the images, and a truthful representation in everything. Even the name of the film, Backsiders, comes from a term for people who live on the less well-off, or "backside" of the island.

In terms of inspirations, our film is in direct conversation with a film called Right Now, Wrong Then, directed by Hong Sang-soo. It too uses a time-loop structure, á la Run Lola Run or Groundhog's Day, where a day repeats itself. There's an emotional response to that structure, possibly because it feels very truthful to our subjective reality: we over-think, we agonize and relive days and decisions all the time in our heads. This tendency, this headspace, felt like an exciting thing to attempt to represent in a short film. It was a way for us to explore some universal issues related to relationships, change, loss, the anxiety to get things right, and the wonder at what could have been.

Directed by Jen Pitt and Craig Newman

Story by Craig Newman, Michael Barringer and Jen Pitt

Written by Michael Barringer

Produced by Craig Newman, Jen Pitt, and Michael Barringer.