The rusting relic of a failed 1950s development scheme, the Salton Sea is a barren California landscape often seen as a symbol of the failed American Dream. First-time director Alma Har'el visits this poetically fruitful terrain and finds there a motley cast, including a bipolar seven-year-old, a lovelorn high school football star, and an octogenarian poet-prophet. Together they make up a triptych of manhood in its decisive moments, populating the Salton Sea's land of thwarted opportunity. True to her roots as a photographer, video artist, and music video director,... Har'el crafts an adamantly atypical and artistically innovative film—a dreamlike poem that sets the personal stories of these distinctive yet familiar characters to a stylized amalgam of observational documentary and choreographed dance, with music by Beirut and Bob Dylan, all cast against the atmospheric scenery of the titular ghost town. The result is a moving and extraordinary documentary experience—an evocative, symbolic portrait of those who live in cultural obscurity. [show more]
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Documentary about the lives of three men in the impoverished Californian desert town of Bombay Beach. The town is located on the shores of the Salton Sea, a man-made sea deep in the desert originally designed as a salubrious art deco holiday destination for rich Californians, but now little more than a pool full of dead fish surrounded by rusting abandoned buildings. Israeli filmmaker Alma Har'el draws on her music video background to weave together an evocative portrait of the town and three of its residents: bi-polar youth Benny Parrish, former oil worker Red Forgy and aspiring football player CeeJay Thompson.
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