Lake Forest Park

Kersti Jan Werdal is a filmmaker and photographer based in California. She studied Anthropology and Art History at Columbia University and video at the California Institute of Art. Lake Forest Park, her first feature film, was shown at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) and Jury mention winner at the Brive Film Festival.

 

NOTICE OF THE SELECTION COMITEE

Lake Forest Park, by Kersti Jan Werdal, opens on a closed–almost derelict–movie theater, to flag some sort of absence and abandonment, specifically that of the golden age of teen movies, as the director tackles its core substance. Teenagers’ bereavement of their deceased mate is no cause for drama, but it is scattered into the very fabric of the film: in the negative space of each frame, in the drifting pace of each shot, in Marisa Anderson’s mournful music. Confronting the all too common tragedy of high-school shootings in the US, Kersti Jan Werdal doesn’t seek to emphasize the violence of the facts, but rather to calmly chronicle the hazy feeling of loss. 

Paola Raiman