For myself and many others, the first we ever heard of Jeonju was through the films made for the Jeonju Digital Project. Somewhere on the other side of the world, a small Asian film festival gave money and free reign to various international filmmakers to make shorts (Claire Denis, Pedro Costa, Jean-Marie Straub, and Matías Piñeiro stuck out at the time). I first heard of the project’s new incarnation while attending the festival in 2016. A few years later, needing to find outside money for a film for the first time, the JEONJU Cinema Project wound up being one of the only options opened to me. In the end, it became the only funding source for Outside Noise. So, many thanks to the JEONJU IFF and Jeonju City for making small films like mine possible and available. Also, its many and varied cafes down hidden alleys. Ted FENDT

Short Stay (2016), Classical Period (2018), Outside Noise (2021)

The Possibility of Uncertainty
A certain listlessness permeates Ted Fendt’s quietly moving and meditative Outside Noise, a film about a trio of young women moving desultorily through places in cities in search of their next moves. It also has blithe and funny moments, including a spontaneous kebab-throwing episode and a wanting afternoon party with an awkward mansplainer played to a tee by Fendt. Its run time is featurette length, and its hangout nature suggests a breezy, by-the-way nebulousness enhanced by the lovely super 16mm cinematography, and its rhythms are languorous. And, yet, the film’s form adopts Straub-Huillet materialism to bodies in spaces and landscapes, giving dimensionality to the act of reading—and speaking, which in this case, also carries an undercurrent of Rohmerian discourse and Hongian discomfiture. The film’s main protagonist, Daniela, talks about her inability to sleep, which makes the condition contagious amongst the women, increasing an uncanny mood.

That life is filled with uncertainty is a given and deeply relatable; the impression that all is askew when one is caught in a debilitating liminal stage filled with doubt is akin to being sleep-deprived, the one informing the other, and vice-versa. Outside Noise is a reference to Emmanuel Lévinas (the evocative title is a nod to the French philosopher’s text on insomnia); Ingeborg Bachmann and Sasha Sokolov further suggest how internal agitation and disquiet often attend the act of thinking and creation. There is nothing overtly grave about Daniela’s hopefully temporary situation (she’s healthy, housed, has job prospects and friends, etc.), but the outside noise seeping into her head may be preventing her from seeing clearly or grasping the possibilities for change existing within the everyday. Although her active kebab-toss is a moment of refreshing decisiveness and release, even if it is later revealed to be predicated upon a false assumption, a small, seemingly inconsequential detail that proves, yet again, that life is sometimes not what it seems, and holds plenty of surprises, even during significant moments of a lull. Andréa PICARD

Production Flaneur Films
Distribution Shellac Distribution (shellac@altern.org)
International Sales Shellac Distribution (shellac@altern.org)

2021 Mar del Plata IFF Altered States Competition (Nominee)

2021 FIDMarseille Grand Prix Special Mention, Grand Prix·GNCR Award (Nominee)