A number of years in the past, filmmaking duo Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti purchased a decrepit duplex with the intention of utilizing it to make films. And that they did. That duplex is the filming location for his or her discovered footage festival-hit It Doesn’t Get Any Higher Than This and their upcoming movie Homebody. And now, they’ve bid their beloved duplex a fond farewell by auctioning it off to the very best bidder at a late-night screening of their discovered footage movie on the Cucalorus Movie Competition.
A Shock Twist to A Late-Night time Screening
Sure, you learn that proper. Kempf and Toti auctioned off a duplex to the very best bidder at a movie pageant. Why? Just because they might.
Toti informed Dread Central, “We’d been contacted by a home flipper who wished to purchase the duplex. That might have been a really wise strategy to recoup some, perhaps even all, of the cash we’d invested. However when the time got here, we simply couldn’t deliver ourselves to undergo with it. Each of the flicks we shot there have been made within the spirit of doing issues the fallacious manner. We broke each widespread sense rule about filmmaking and distribution, so it appeared becoming to do the stupidest doable factor we might consider, which was to public sale off the duplex throughout a Q&A at what could also be our final huge pageant look.”
Aaron Hillis, programmer on the Cucalorus Movie Competition in Wilmington, North Carolina, noticed It Doesn’t Get Any Higher Than This on the 2024 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. From there, he knew he wished the movie as a part of their late-night Convulsions program.
“Since my introduction to Cucalorus, I’ve witnessed many unusual, hilarious, completely ephemeral, FOMO-inducing happenings over the higher a part of 30 years,” stated Hillis. “Once I realized Nick and Rachel have been critical about auctioning off the duplex throughout our Q&A, I couldn’t inform if the mischievous spirits being conjured got here from the pageant or the netherworld.”
Within the discovered footage movie, Kempf and Toti mix truth and fiction as they star as a married couple who purchase an deserted duplex in Missouri to movie a low-budget horror film. However as they begin to movie, random strangers start showing exterior, staring on the outdated constructing in an unsettling trance. It Doesn’t Get Any Higher Than This blends archival footage with footage filmed within the duplex to create a uniquely terrifying expertise that can, in keeping with Kempf and Toti, by no means be launched on-line.
Welcome To The Duplex
After a energetic public sale, the duplex ended up going to Zoë Ligon and Lyndsay Rae, admins of the Effed Up Movie Heads Discord, for $1000.
“Earlier than I even had an opportunity to google Kirksville and the way lengthy of a drive it was from me, I knew I wanted the Missouri mouth of hell to be part of my life,” stated Ligon. “Lyndsay and I shortly knew that we needed to bid. Will she and I make a film? Will this be the place I lastly actualize my ‘dildo home’ recycled intercourse toy artwork challenge? Will the Hellmouth swallow us each alive earlier than we now have an opportunity to do both of these items? Solely time will inform…”
No Higher Ending
Sure, there was a stipulation that when bought, the enormous Hellmouth portray needed to stay intact. It’s the proper addition to any artist collective, don’t you suppose? For Kempf and Toti, the duplex couldn’t have gone to raised consumers.
“This duplex served because the set for 2 horror films. The partitions and flooring are lined in blood. There’s an enormous fuck-off Hellmouth on the wall and a mural to crystal meth within the closet. There could or is probably not a ghost within the basement whose voice we recorded when filming It Doesn’t Get Any Higher Than This,” stated Kempf. “Figuring out this beloved nightmare of a constructing will stay on and be stuffed with bizarre artwork (and presumably one million dildos) is the very best final result a goth nerd like myself might presumably hope for.”
Plainly there might be no higher destiny for a haunted, deserted, dilapidated, outdated duplex than to maneuver from one group of artists to a different. Whereas it could be a “nightmare of a constructing”, it’s additionally residence to artwork in its many kinds.
It Doesn’t Get Any Higher Than This may have choose screenings across the nation following its pageant run. You possibly can request the movie to come back to your metropolis right here. You may as well join updates on their subsequent movie Homebody right here.
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