Lindsey’s films are humorous, sometimes dark looks at the inner workings of families going through crisis, often embracing the absurd. Her interests are in locations and how humans connect to the places they are from; in cyclical patterns of generations of women living in poverty in rural America and the bizarre tactics individuals, especially young girls and women, design to cope with traumatic experiences.
Using traditional narrative structures as the initial framework, Lindsey mixes in changing visual modes through different animation techniques. The changes in mode allow the viewer to explore character’s complex thought processes.
Lindsey’s work has screened nationally and internationally including the Slamdance Film Festival, the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, the Athens International Film and Video Festival, San Francisco Doc Fest and Cleveland International Film Festival. Her film, Every Speed, won the Premio Asolo Award for Best Film on Architecture at the Asolo Art Film Festival. Her films have also screened at various conferences and symposiums around the U.S. Lindsey received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA from Temple University. She is an Assistant Professor of Film Production at Ohio University’s School of Film.
Director Statement
Suicide rates in rural America have been steadily increasing over the last few years. Pottero was developed in response to the loss of a close family member who was dealing with issues around access to healthcare, the cyclical nature of poverty and generational mental illness. This film is a personal narrative examining my own “escape” via social mobility and the privilege education and access have awarded me in adulthood. It’s also about that struggle to connect to a community I tried so hard to leave.
Pottero uses a reflexive framework. It’s a folktale within a folktale featuring my family monster, a violent beast who suffers from a disturbing anatomical abnormality. For some, our monsters follow us into adulthood waiting to feed on financial insecurities, depression, addiction and repression.
Using the medium of animation, I’m bringing up some shared historical traumas of the Appalachian region to make new narratives around transformation. The worlds created by animation defy all rules- gravity/physics/reality, allowing my monster to come to life, shifting and changing much like the people here and everywhere.
My hope is this story will inspire others to tell their own monster tales through a series of community animation workshops being developed in partnership with the Ohio Valley Center for Collaborative Arts. Giving people the tools and agency to to tell their own stories is imperative to changing representation of Appalachia and to raise questions about our identities, the relationships to the locations we come from, and all those monsters waiting for us there.
FEEDBACK Animation Film & Screenplay Festival 