Bermuda International Film Festival 2009

Cindy Sherman is a well-known Contemporary Artist whose art primarily focuses on photographing herself in a series of different self-constructed persona of women that exist in film, magazine and history. Her work becomes a deconstruction of stereotypical public identities in the gaze of her audience - layers of identities one can strip off and put back on. The documentary is about Paul H-Q’s ‘Cinderella’-like encounter with Sherman and his consequent identity struggle. He loses his existing identity along with ‘the shoe’ during his relationship and fails to reinvent one that is compatible to Cindy’s celebrity’ existence. The documentary gives an authentic portrayal of New York contemporary art scene along with Sherman’s work and the cou-ple’s relationship.

While his previous films were set in his native Scotland, Rez Bomb provides quite a contrast for director Steven Lewis Simpson. The story is set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, one the poorest place in the USA. In its original script form, the film was to take place in Edinburgh, but after visiting South Dakota and finding a rapport with the local Native American population, the director decided to switch locales and base his thriller/love story in the US. Rez Bomb pairs Tamara Feldman (Dirty Sexy Money, Hatchet, Perfect Stranger) as a Lakota woman and Trent Ford (How to Deal, Gosford Park, September Dawn) as her white boyfriend. The film also provides a juicy part for native American actor and activist Russell Means (Last of the Mohicans, Natural Born Killers). The plot is about lovers from different backgrounds who run afoul of a ruthless money lender, and find themselves in a race against the clock to bail themselves out of a dangerous situation. While the location shooting in South Dakota takes advantage of the desolate plains and mountains of the area and the obvious poverty of the Reservation itself, it tells a universal story.