Much like a child protecting a cache, I’ve hoarded my thoughts on Alex Karpovsky’s filmmaking for more than a year now. At times I find myself sneaking out from the routine of my daily life to visit the sanctuary in my mind where these thoughts are stored. I shift through themes of mystery, obsession, existential uncertainty with an undefinable euphoria, a sense that the ideas themselves are hinting at a truth much larger than even my imagination is.
And yet, in presentation, the ideas of Karpovsky’s debut The Hole Story and recent festival release Woodpecker are clothed in such easy humor that it’s impossible to claim that these ideas I’ve hoarded with such joy are clothed in any fashion of pretentiousness. In fact, throughout a conversation with the filmmaker, I’m struck by his excess of humility, his tendency to cushion any heady notion with an apology of sorts, as if he is somehow asking permission to express himself with as much intelligence as underlies the brilliance of his work.
Transitioning from backgrounds in visual ethnography and theater, Karpovsky arrived on the independent film scene in 2005, landing on Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces… list with his distinctive fiction-fact hybrid. Described on that list as a stylistic mix of Woody Allen and Werner Herzog, The Hole Story follows a somewhat manic Karpovsky doppelgänger as he tries to produce a show about small town mysteries. Using a mix of documentary and narrative footage, the film watches as the mystery eludes the aspiring director, and he unravels in ways that are both astoundingly sad and funny, his delusions pitiable although his determination inspira-amusing.
