In Venus Holler your future is settled the day you are born. For 21-year old Jamalee with her tomato-red hair, this means born to get pregnant or go to jail or jump off a cliff. For her mother, Bev, it means you turn tricks to pay the bills. "You don’t confront trouble, you flatter it. Have a beer, inhale, kick back and have a belly laugh". But that’s not enough for Jamalee. Her plan is to get out of there as fast as she can. She wants to find somewhere with a bunch of shiny fellas in tuxedos making music just behind the palm trees - possibly Beverly Hills or Palm Beach. And she figures her brother Jason’s movie star looks are their ticket to a better life. But Jason is hiding a dark secret that threatens to undermine all her plans. When Sammy drives into town looking for his next beer and a bunch that’ll have him, Jamalee thinks he may just be the man they’ve been looking for. Before long he’s entangled in her web of longing, desire and revenge.
"Daniel Woodrell weaves a spell over you with the poetry of his language and his sense of humor instantly brings a smile to your face. Then he hits you with some hard earned truth and leaves you reeling. I think this book is more relevant than ever today. The characters are wonderfully flawed and masters of their own destinies. The story is very original and powerful and takes you on an adventure full of unexpected twists and turns. And the ending, well, it’s devastating. [...] Having made two films which were based very much on reality, I was keen to have a new challenge. This book is a complete contrast to what I’d done before in terms of tone and setting and language. But if you look underneath you will find the same theme at the heart of it, the same questions and dilemmas. How do you respond to violence? What happens when you don’t have a voice? How do you live with injustice?." [Juanita Wilson]
Irish writer and director Juanita Wilson is one of cinema’s rising stars. Wilson’s first short film The Door received Academy Award® nomination in 2010 and went on to win numerous awards at festivals throughout the world. She followed this with an equally hard hitting true story of the Bosnian War, As If I Am Not There, based on Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulić’s book of the same name. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Special Jury Silver Pyramid in the Cairo International Film Festival. She won Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Film at the 2011 Irish Film and Television Academy Awards in 2011. She has just completed her film adaptation of the novel Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (author of Winter’s Bone, a 2011 Academy Award® Best Picture Nominee).
2017 Tomato Red
2010 As If I Am Not There
2008 The Door [short]
PROGRAM
08/12/2017 h 18:00: Teatro Sociale guest:the director
