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Simultaneously a gentle portrait of two aging artists and an appreciative look at a bickering but loving couple, Daniel Hymanson’s debut feature, So Late So Soon, benefits from a level of access most documentarians would crave. Having known Chicago-based artists and educators Jackie and Don Seiden since he was a young boy, Hymanson sets himself and his camera inside the Seidens’s multi-storied, eye-catching home. Known locally as the Candyland House, the Barbie House and the Rainbow Cone Home, this Rogers Park residence has been occupied by the Seidens for close to 50 years, its interiors and exteriors closely resembling the […]

The post Via Chicago: Daniel Hymanson on His Documentary Debut So Late So Soon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Simultaneously a gentle portrait of two aging artists and an appreciative look at a bickering but loving couple, Daniel Hymanson’s debut feature, So Late So Soon, benefits from a level of access most documentarians would crave. Having known Chicago-based artists and educators Jackie and Don Seiden since he was a young boy, Hymanson sets himself and his camera inside the Seidens’s multi-storied, eye-catching home. Known locally as the Candyland House, the Barbie House and the Rainbow Cone Home, this Rogers Park residence has been occupied by the Seidens for close to 50 years, its interiors and exteriors closely resembling the […]

The post Via Chicago: Daniel Hymanson on His Documentary Debut So Late So Soon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The couple at the center of Daniel Hymanson’s documentary “So Late So Soon” often compare themselves to a mouse and an alligator. The characterization feels apt for Jackie and Don Seiden, two aging artists who’ve occupied a multicolored Victorian home in Chicago for decades. Jackie scurries around, dancing, dusting, and decorating their house with found objects from Furbies to vintage suitcases — all in pastel hues of pink, purple, blue, or yellow. Don, meanwhile, sits in his chair as he reads and sketches, like an alligator, he says, waiting “for things to pass me by.” He couldn’t be more out of place in Jackie’s candy-colored wonderland, and it’s this opposition that seems to fuel their fascination with one another, as well as their somewhat frequent feuds, as they navigate the ups and downs of aging, artistic creation, and long-term cohabitation.

Hymanson grew up with Jackie and Don,...

As Jackie and Don Seiden unintentionally describe themselves by way of an impromptu thought experiment: he’s the warm-hearted crocodile and she the intelligent mouse. They are opposites yet the same—incongruous creatures bound by a half-century of marriage that became more about building a life together rather than necessarily being together. Jackie is quick to mention how afraid she is of intimacy and Don is constantly doing things at his own pace separate from her, but neither could ever imagine themselves not having the other by their side at the end of the day to argue, pity, or share their latest work-in-progress. Age, however, has thrown a wrinkle in the independence they crave. As they deteriorate physically, they’re forced to confront everything they used to blindly ignore.

Director Daniel Hymanson filmed the couple over a five-year period, juxtaposing this new chapter in their lives with archival footage of...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Fox Maxy's Maat Means Land (2020) MoMA has announced the lineup and schedule for “To The Lighthouse,” a thrilling carte blanche program by curator Mark McElhatten featuring new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernie Gehr, Jodie Mack, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, and more, along with older films by Rivette, Joseph H. Lewis, Claire Denis, and Marguerite Duras.An essential annual list, Filmmaker Magazine's 25 new faces of film for 2021 includes Kate Gondwe (the founder of Dezda Films), filmmaker Fox Maxy, Omnes Films (the collective behind Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye), and others. A24 and Emma Stone’s production company, Fruit Tree Banner, have come together to back Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow. The film, a follow-up to Schoenbrun's debut from this year, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, follows...

"It's only a life that you and I could've made." Oscilloscope Labs has unveiled an official trailer for an indie documentary titled So Late So Soon, made by filmmaker Daniel Hymanson. This intially premiered at last year's True/False Documentary Film Festival, and arrives in select theaters this fall starting in November. Chicago artists Jackie & Don Seiden are a half-century into their marriage, time spent creating distinct yet congruous bodies of work. As they get older, they begint o look back at their life together as they contend with the deterioration of their bodies and beloved home. More from T/F: "So Late So Soon is a sensitively constructed, playful character study that honors Jackie and Don’s art, and even becomes a part of it, while also locating in it glimmers of their essence." Described in reviews as "intimate and bittersweet, an existence that, if not completely full, comes very close to it.

Living the art life means being constantly open to the muse. Amenable to the possibility that you might one day be inspired — as Chicago artist Jackie Seiden is in the opening scene of the bittersweet, True/False-premiering documentary So Late So Soon — to use dental floss to string up a cow figurine in the kitchen of your own home.

That house, where Jackie has lived for decades with fellow creative Don Seiden (her husband of half a century), is a quirky, colorful locale out of a Wes Anderson fantasia. The walls are painted bright whites, blues and pinks. Suitcases, dolls,...

Living the art life means being constantly open to the muse. Amenable to the possibility that you might one day be inspired — as Chicago artist Jackie Seiden is in the opening scene of the bittersweet, True/False-premiering documentary So Late So Soon — to use dental floss to string up a cow figurine in the kitchen of your own home.

That house, where Jackie has lived for decades with fellow creative Don Seiden (her husband of half a century), is a quirky, colorful locale out of a Wes Anderson fantasia. The walls are painted bright whites, blues and pinks. Suitcases, dolls,...