WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS

Date: Monday, December 1, 2014

Time: 7PM

Location: Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

Details: 108 min, USA, 2013

Filmmaker(s): AJ Schnack, David Wilson

Winner of the 2013 SXSW Jury Prize for Direction

Co-director David Wilson will attend in person for Q&A moderated by Jane Gillooly, filmmaker and film/video faculty member at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Synopsis: Five years in the making, WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS is a story of family, community, music and tradition set against the backdrop of Branson, Missouri, one of the biggest tourist destinations in America. A remote Ozark Mountain town of just 10,500, Branson hosts more than 7.5 million tourists a year and generates nearly 3 billion dollars in annual tourism revenue.

At the heart of Branson’s appeal is the more than 100 staged music shows that earned the town the monicker of “the live music capital of the world”. These shows are well known for their “traditional, family” style of entertainment – no cussing, no nudity, no gambling, healthy doses of gospel and respect for veterans – and crowds from around the country, and particularly from the American midwest, flock to Branson for this “return to old fashioned values”.

Directors AJ Schnack and David Wilson and Producer Nathan Truesdell spent the past five years documenting Branson and profiling four families who live and perform there. They found, as one of their subjects noted, that “Branson seems very simplistic on the outside, like you could paint it in a dozen sentences. I think you’ll find the surface truth doesn’t match the actuality.”

Set against the backdrop of a country dealing with economic uncertainty and changes in attitudes on social issues, these four families form a composite both of Branson and of contemporary America.

DocYard Shorts – New England: Prior to each feature screening, The DocYard will theatrically present one short nonfiction work. This season, we showcase a selection of works made in and about New England, or by New England-based filmmakers.

Tonight we present DRY STONE by Graham Deneen. DRY STONE is an exploration of the connection between the stone wall, its builder, and the landscape. The film won the Mass Reality Check Best Short Award at the 2014 Salem Film Fest.