VISIONS, in collaboration with la lumière collective, presents: Melanie Shatzky + Brian M. Cassidy [Filmmakers present]

The Patron Saints (2011, HD, 71 min, English)

Bold and unremitting in its depiction of the elderly, The Patron Saints eschews our hyper-individualistic culture obsessed with youth. Taking a head-on approach, husband-and-wife duo Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky peer with fly-on-the-wall access into the beige, featureless corridors of a nursing home, presenting an uneasy yet impactful 'portrait of fading bodies and minds.' Forgoing conventional documentary modes for a poetic treatment of the aging, the residents here, shot over the course of five years, are captured with a disconcerting deadpan realism—candid depictions not unlike Larry Clark’s bruising sexually active teenagers in Kids (1995).