It’s certainly really cool to watch the movie and think to yourself, “Hey, I recognize where this scene was shot!,” and you’ll likely do that a lot throughout the 83-minute run time. The film was shot entirely in Columbus by a local cast and crew and does a fantastic job representing the sights and sounds of the local music scene and different locations around town where related-type activity takes place. That’s as much as I want to share about the plot though you’ll pick up some more from the trailer. She meets – and interviews – a series of artists along the way but becomes enthralled (obsessed?) with the mysterious, larger-than-life Bobbi Kitten who fronts Damn the Witch Siren, a band that has earned quite the following in both the film and in real life. The basic premise of POSER, the debut film from local directors Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, is that a shy and introverted music fan, Lennon ( Sylvie Mix), starts a podcast as a way to work her way into the local music scene. Poserfest, a musical event happening on both the A&R Music Bar and The Basement stages, featuring artists featured in the film, takes place on Saturday, June 10. For showings Thursday through Sunday, directors Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, actresses Sylvie Mix and Bobbi Kitten, and other members of the cast and crew will participate in Q&A sessions. Ultimately, it's as profound as the stoned guy on a couch, musing on the taste difference between a single chip folded on itself and two chips stacked.POSER makes it’s Ohio premiere on Thursday night at the Gateway Film Center. Sometimes that humor is inadvertent: That recognition of Columbus as just another spawn of the ur-scene may raise a chortle about how every town has a bunch of mediocre trios who pitch themselves with a descriptor that reads like an explosion in an exquisite corpse factory. It's funny in places, especially in the brief moments with Kitten's always-masked creative partner, Z Wolf. Around the somewhat slight stalker plot is a film about the creative process and underground art scenes that's trying to explain both phenomena to audiences who probably won't spend much time at warehouse shows and backroom installations: Yet it's also so much a part of that scene that it can never quite extend that invite enough. Part defanged Ingrid Goes West, part Our Band Could Be Your Life (and you may wish that part was the whole), Poser poses an intriguing conundrum for itself. But mostly it becomes an excuse for Lennon to insinuate herself into Kitten's world, as Poser increasingly becomes an arthouse Single White Female told from the perspective of Jennifer Jason Leigh's character. The young follower has inserted herself into the $5 cover music scene through meekly asking local creatives to be on her podcast, a show that no one ever seems to wonder why they've never actually heard an episode of. It's also very much a mash note to electro-pop duo Damn the Witch Siren (appearing as themselves) and especially to Bobbi Kitten (charismatic and wild, appearing as a fictionalized version of herself), somewhat stalked by the wannabe artist/wannabe somebody Lennon (Mix, deliberately if sometimes frustratingly a cypher). Smoky, hazy, dreamdrift cinematography courtesy of Logan Floyd gives Poser a poignancy and glow that is alluring but never quite captures the piss-trough stink and spilled-drink stickiness of an actual underground art scene. But Poser, the debut feature from local filmmakers Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, is so in love with the scene from which it draws, with the bands given momentary cameos, with the cool hipness and store brand subversion of it all, that they never seem quite capable of giving it the critique for which they seem to aim. We've all been there, in that cheap beer demimonde where sloppy precision is everything, and the next big thing is everywhere else's fifth-on-the-bill touring act. While slow-bubble psychodrama Poser might be deeply entrenched in the art rock scene of Columbus, Ohio, there's a comfortable recognizability to its depiction of underground gigs, halfway-informed discussions on creativity.
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