FRAUD (Dean Fleischer-Camp, U.S.). 52 minutes. Rating: NNNN
In this found-footage project that obliterates the line between fiction and documentary, director Dean Fleischer-Camp and editor Jonathan Rippon construct a completely artificial narrative from an archive of home videos uploaded to YouTube.
Some 100 hours of innocuous material – all of it shot between 2008 and 2015 – have been reshaped into a low-key drama about an average Buffalo family coping with mounting debt in the summer of 2012.
It’s a fascinating experiment in subversive storytelling, with Fleischer-Camp’s subtle manipulations and re-contextualizations prodding the story in increasingly darker directions. I have no idea how it’ll play with an audience, but I’m really curious to find out.
May 1, 9:45 pm, TIFF 4 May 3, 3:15 pm, Scotiabank 7 May 6, 9:45 pm, TIFF 3
