The Royal Road
Description
San Francisco director Jenni Olson’s second feature-length film solidifies her standing as a major voice in personal essay filmmaking. Primarily composed of only two elements—Olson’s self-conscious butch voiceover narration and long takes of beautifully composed urban landscapes—the film’s spare approach belies a sly and bountiful complexity as it burrows into the endlessly mineable terrains of history and memory. At turns humorous and tragic, The Royal Road brilliantly disentangles and recombines Olson’s personal identity with California’s cultural development by focusing on the real and metaphoric ground of the El Camino Real, the road Jesuit and Franciscan monks established in the late 17th century to connect missionary outposts. Olson’s wry narration disarmingly recounts personal stories of unrequited romance, loving analysis of classic Hollywood movie plots and histories of pre-Gold Rush California. Echoing the work of Chris Marker, W.G. Sebald and Walter Benjamin, The Royal Road insistently circles the tenuous ties between memory and identity by surveying the very paths one takes. Shot entirely on vibrant 16mm film, the movie presents a sublime portrait of San Francisco as a city steeped in nostalgia and of California as a place whose fantastical ties to the Gold Rush and Hollywood belies its status as a contested site. —Sean Uyehara
Jenni Olson is one of the world’s leading experts on LGBT cinema history and is currently VP of e-commerce at WolfeVideo.com. Her debut feature film, The Joy of Life (SFIFF 2005) world premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and went on to play a pivotal role in renewing debate about the need for a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as earning the 2005 Outfest Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement and the 2005 NewFest Award for Best US Screenplay. Jenni’s most recent short film, 575 Castro St., premiered at Sundance and screened at the Berlin Panorama in 2009.
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/122138315?autoplay=1Film Details
Language English
Year 2015
Runtime 65
Country USA
Director Jenni Olson
Producer Julie Dorf, Jenni Olson
Writer Jenni Olson
Editor Dawn Logsdon
Cinematographer Sophia Constantinou