Dara Bratt | 8 min | USA | 2012
SYNOPSIS
FLUTTER shares the life of John Bedford, 70′s, who has been collecting butterflies his whole life. Extending beyond the exotic and gorgeous butterflies, this is the reflective and meditative portrait of a lonely man seeking companionship in the arms of nature. Immensely visual, the film plunges audiences into John’s previously inaccessible and fragile environment. But as the film reveals, our subject is as fragile as the habitat he loves and seeks to preserve.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Directed by Dara Bratt
Produced by Katie Knab, Kieran Dick, Piper Perabo and KT Boylan
DIRECTOR’S BIO
I am always intrigued by the observers- not the talkers. I like documentary films that are narrative in structure and I like narrative films inspired by documentary. A lover of story telling in all its forms, one of my first breaks was being handed a second camera by John Cameron Mitchell on the set of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and being told to “shoot some interesting footage.” The love affair had already begun. I moved to NY to complete my MFA in film at NYU. My thesis film, In Vivid Detail, examined the neurological condition known as Prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces. It was the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan production grant from NYU, and starred Golden Globe nominee Piper Perabo and John Ventimiglia.
In Vivid Detail screened internationally, from the Tribeca Film Festival, to The Middle Eastern International Film Festival-Abu Dhabi, as well as Palm Springs, the Savannah Film Festival and the ShortShorts Asia Festival in Japan. It currently screens online through the Museum of Moving Images.
Most recently, Flutter was the recipient of a documentary microgrant from RIS, a FAP grant from the National Film Board of Canada, and invited to premiere with 10 other grantees at Cannes this May. While Flutter is a poetic portrait of an older man who seeks solace in the jungle, I found myself once again in the field of science, this time learning about entomology. Somehow, the lure to science is too hard to resist.
Using the principal of mechanical resonance, and applying it as an analogy for mental and physical suffering, my feature narrative script Resonance tells the story of the unlikely friendship between two guys who meet in a hospital cafeteria. It was recently the recipient of the Tribeca Film Institute/Sloan Award and was also a finalist for the Chris Columbus/Vague Award.
Additionally, I am currently re-editing a feature documentary on Canada’s most controversial historical figure: Dr. Morgentaler. “The Singing Abortionist” is the deconstruction of a man behind a cause.
I spend my time divided between apartments in both NY and Toronto- and multiple visits to Montreal—the cities I call home.
