#MondayMovies: Dylan and Dakota Pailes-Friedman
daylan and dakota pailes-friedman
Collaborating with the people you love can bring you closer together…it can also have disastrous consequences. I’ve experienced firsthand how creating art can sour relationships that once seemed indestructible, starting off a project with hope and ending it with resentment. In the passion of filmmaking and art making, where a strong point of view is required, working with those you love can be risky business.
That’s why I am always interested in the sibling collaboration.
Dylan and Dakota are Brooklyn born artists and brothers (our second duo of sibling filmmakers), collaborators and best friends. They’re multidisciplinary creatives, with backgrounds in sculpture, painting and animation; and when the two wanted to collaborate together, film seemed the obvious crossover
Their short, I’ll Be Here for a While, was inspired by a news article Dakota read about identity loss. What started as a very loose impressionistic first draft, just to get something down on paper, developed into something more personal and sincere. Their work engages with a lot of consistent themes, usually having to do with family, caretaking and the toll that can take on relationships. Those themes slowly crept into their initial idea and ended with a film named after a Townes Van Zandt song. Well acted, well crafted and incredibly moving. A testament to how a simple human story can seem so fresh and new when you have unique people telling it.
Where to Watch
See what films inspired them below!
amour
“When we were writing I’ll Be Here for a While the two of us were watching A LOT of Haneke. We actually ended up watching Amour after we had written the first few drafts, and were really taken by some of the narrative similarities. Haneke is a real master of pace and narrative, and it was super informative to watch how he was able to say things with the camera.”
Where to Watch
zama
“Zama is one of our favorite films to come out in the last five years. Martel has an incredible way of delivering surreal narrative and imagery in a completely nuanced way. We were very inspired by how gracefully she can bridge that gap. A huge element of our collaboration is exploring the line between realism and the supernatural. When we first started working together there was a lot of push and pull, Dylan leaned more towards realism and Dakota towards the supernatural. Overtime and with the guidance of filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel, we’ve been able to navigate a way to make both sides incredibly appealing. We’ve started to see ways to blur the line, where suddenly the supernatural imagery starts to feel like realism and the realism starts to feel surreal.”
Where to Watch
cavalo dinheiro
“Horse Money is an all time favorite. It’s such a deviation from conventional movie making that it almost can’t be qualified as film. Costa’s movies always push us to be brave and not give too many shits about sticking to conventions. They make us want to break rules and push the boundaries of what a movie is or can be. Plus from a visual aesthetics perspective, Horse Money is just about the most beautiful movie possible, and he manages it on a DV camera... So that alone is inspiration!”