The Royal Road
Jenni Olson's cinematic poem has been acclaimed the most ambitious documentary project in this year's Sundance Festival New Frontier section, the most radical and experimental at the event. Maybe it's because only Olson, a romantic tomboy, can combine three such distant themes as a thoroughly researched investigation of California's colonial past, a homage to Hitchcock's Vertigo (itself a cinematic paean to San Francisco's charms) and the passion and breakup of two women separated by hundreds of miles of the Interstate 5 freeway. The story is framed by deceptively simple images of dimming Golden State urban landscapes. Abandoned factories, a rusty buoy in the San Francisco Bay, empty streets and elegant churches become melancholy postcards from a trip through a disappearing world. The mix of these three themes produces a unique and nostalgic tale of California love and loss.
Jenni Olson
She is a director, journalist, curator and film historian who specializes in the history of LGBT cinema. She is the founder and head of queer film festivals and reviews (including Minneapolis/St. Paul LGBT film Festival), the founder of an information portal about LGBT movies called PopcornQ and the PlanetOut Online Cinema streaming platform. Her films are based on archive and collecting practices. She has spent years collecting and recording film materials concerning important changes in California's landscape, which she later incorporates into her films.
Selected filmography
1995 Trailer Camp
2001 Meep Meep!
2005 The Joy of Life
2009 575 Castro St.
2015 Królewski szlak / The Royal Road
