{"id":7190,"date":"2018-07-16T16:52:25","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T14:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=7190"},"modified":"2018-07-16T16:52:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T14:52:25","slug":"the-tale-starring-laura-dern-will-have-its-sa-premier-at-this-years-durban-international-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2018\/07\/16\/the-tale-starring-laura-dern-will-have-its-sa-premier-at-this-years-durban-international-film-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tale, Starring Laura Dern, Will Have Its SA Premier At This Year’s Durban International Film Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tale, starring Laura Dern will have its SA Premiere at this year\u2019s Durban International Film Festival on Saturday, July 21 at 14:15 at Suncoast CineCentre followed by a screening on July 23 at 16:00 at Musgrave Ster Kinekor. The director Jennifer Fox will be in attendance at the DIFF to present her film, and at the Durban FilmMart where she will be participating in a panel session entitled\u00a0The Medium is the Message, where she will be discussing the transition from documentary film-making to narrative film-making.<\/p>\n

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Laura Dern<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Tale\u00a0chronicles one woman\u2019s powerful investigation into her own childhood memories, as she is forced to reexamine her first sexual experience \u2013 and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. The film is written and directed by Sundance Grand Prize winner and Emmy\u00ae nominee Jennifer Fox, who based it on her own true story.<\/p>\n

Starring Laura Dern (Oscar\u00ae nominee for \u201cWild\u201d and \u201cRambling Rose\u201d; Emmy\u00ae winner for HBO\u2019s \u201cBig Little Lies\u201d; Emmy\u00ae nominee for HBO\u2019s \u201cEnlightened,\u201d \u201cRecount\u201d and \u201cAfterburn\u201d), together with Isabelle N\u00e9lisse (\u201cMama\u201d), Elizabeth Debicki (\u201cThe Night Manager\u201d), Jason Ritter (\u201cKevin (Probably) Saves the World\u201d), Frances Conroy (Emmy\u00ae nominee for HBO\u2019s \u201cSix Feet Under\u201d) and John Heard (Emmy\u00ae nominee for HBO\u2019s \u201cThe Sopranos\u201d), with Common (Oscar\u00ae winner for \u201cSelma\u201d) and Ellen Burstyn (Academy Award\u00ae winner for \u201cAlice Doesn\u2019t Live Here Anymore\u201d).<\/p>\n

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An accomplished documentarian working in New York, Jennifer (Laura Dern) is completing her latest project about the lives of women around the world. She receives a series of phone calls from her mother, Nettie (Ellen Burstyn), who has found a short story Jennifer wrote at age 13, in which she describes various encounters with her riding instructor, Mrs. G (Elizabeth Debicki), and her running coach, Bill (Jason Ritter), while at summer camp. Nettie is unnerved by the implications of her daughter\u2019s writing, but Jennifer is nonplussed. She has always looked back with fondness on the time she spent with these two charismatic adults.<\/p>\n

Egged on by Nettie and encouraged by her supportive fianc\u00e9 (Common), Jennifer yearns to know more and sets out on a journey, 30 years later, to find those people from her past \u2013 the children, now adults, who also attended the camp back then \u2013 and eventually the coaches themselves. But the more she learns, the more her memories shift and the more questions she unearths. As Jennifer\u2019s frustration mounts, she finds herself turning inward to get to the truth, imagining conversations with her 13-year-old self (Isabelle N\u00e9lisse) and even Mrs. G and Bill in an effort to understand how and why events occurred so long ago.<\/p>\n

An unforgettable meditation on the elusive nature of memory,\u00a0The Tale\u00a0is the first narrative feature from Jennifer Fox, whose documentary films have earned international acclaim for their groundbreaking artistry and unflinching honesty. Based on Fox\u2019s own life story, THE TALE sees the filmmaker bravely pushing forward the boundaries of conventional storytelling, creating a dialogue between past and present to illustrate the interplay between memory and trauma.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal was not to ask, ‘Did this happen?,’ because I always remembered it,” explains writer and director Fox. “It was, ‘How and why did it happen, and how and why did I spin it as a positive story?’ There was a lightbulb moment when I was making another film about women all around the world, and it seemed that every other woman \u2013 regardless of class, culture or color \u2013 had an abuse story to tell. Their stories just floored me, because they had a system or a paradigm that looked like my story. Suddenly, I couldn\u2019t see it as my own private little narrative and knew that it was time to investigate what happened in the open space of a fictional film.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Tale is produced by Jennifer Fox, Oren Moverman, Laura Rister, Mynette Louie, Simone Pero, Lawrence Inglee, Sol Bondy, Regina K. Scully, Lynda Weinman and Reka Posta. Julie Parker Benello, Dan Cogan, Geralyn Dreyfous, Wendy Ettinger, Abigail E. Disney, Robert & Penny Fox, Jayme Lemons, Amy Rodrigue, Ali Jazayeri, Jason Van Eman, David Van Eman, Ross Marroso and Ben McConley are executive producers.<\/p>\n

The Tale will be on MNET in SA in August this year.<\/p>\n

The Full programme for DIFF can be downloaded here:\u00a0durbanfilmfest.co.za\/images\/DIFF2018\/diff-2018-programme.pdf<\/a>\u00a0or follow on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.<\/p>\n