Xav Leplae

Razor's Edge

Xav Leplae, Stephanie Barber

One friend tells another friend what she remembers from reading the Somerset Maugham novel "The Razor's Edge" ten or fifteen years ago. It is a sketchy and slanted remembering. They decide to shoot a film of this memory, a foggy tale with scant connection to the original but feeling the patronage of that text. Being artists and tricksters, they do it as a game, all in one week, with donated short-ends and gestural implications to narrative. What they really do is visit after years of not visiting. Endless talks about the state of the planet and our access to knowledge or the ineptitude of art. All this talking and the film turns out with almost no dialogue but sweeps through the city of Baltimore (which is often destitute, tropical and friendly).

Riverwest Film & Video

Emir Cakaroz

Xav Leplae

Take a deep dive into the underground eco-system that is Milwaukee's Riverwest Film & Video. Part video store, part radio station, and totally trippy, Riverwest serves as a neighborhood hangout for cinephiles, soulful singers, and lost souls. Director Emir Cakaroz takes his place with the other flies on the wall and introduces us to an amazing cast of real-life characters, from self proclaimed rabbis to would-be bike messengers, it takes all kinds to create the self-contained universe that is Riverwest Film & Video.