gravida: The Uber-Indie Project Turns the Camera on Itself

Starring: Rachel Shaw and Adam Kukic
Cinematography by: David Eger
Written and directed by: Lucas McNelly[1]
$2,000/25 min/Pittsburgh, PA

We come now to our biggest ever conflict of interest, Lucas McNelly's gravida (2007), a film made by the very person who does these reviews you've come to eagerly await. Naturally, I cannot review my own film. That would be weird and completely inappropriate, which is probably just as well because I'm at the point right now where I can't stand to look at it anymore. But does that mean gravida should be denied the rich experience that is the Uber-Indie Project? Of course not. So, I've asked ten of my fellow bloggers to review it for me and if any other reviews trickle in, I'll add those as well. They are under strict orders to not treat the film with kids gloves. Good, bad, indifferent. They're all here.

And away we go...

"The short film is a 'study in loneliness' from dedicated indie filmmaker Lucas McNelly, the creative mind behind the stark, French New Wave-inspired L'Attente (2006). Expressing an intangible concept like loneliness through the screen might seem problematic, but McNelly takes his best shot... The results are heartfelt and poetic. If McNelly is striving to craft an indie film masterwork gravida is a major step in the right direction." — Thom Ryan, Film of the Year

"Like the best films about intimacy, it draws you in close but leaves out enough that you can project your own hopes and fears onto the characters. This allows for conflicting sympathies and ensures that not everyone in the audience relates with the characters in the same way.

Loneliness is a mysterious beast, hard to tame. Resisting the temptation to simplify, gravida invites us to ponder the complexity of the choices we make, the unreliability of human connections." — Matt Riviera, Last Night with Riviera

"Watching gravida, I gained a little more faith in ultra-low budget filmmaking; it's far from a perfect film, but it shows that you don't need a lot of money to make a smart, personal, interesting movie. To do this, Lucas McNelly's film utilizes the writer-director's ear for dialogue and some intriguing subtext in its look at a woman who's dealing with something very familiar: loneliness." — Pacheco, Bohemian Cinema

Article Author: Lucas McNelly

Lucas McNelly @lmcnelly is the award-winning filmmaker behind UP COUNTRY, BLANC DE BLANC, and GRAVIDA. Maybe you've heard of him. Maybe you haven't.

Visit Lucas McNelly's author page — Lucas McNelly's Blog