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Josephine Decker's Madeline's Madeline is having its exclusive online premiere on Mubi in the United Kingdom. It is showing May 10 – June 8, 2019, and a retrospective of Decker's work is showing May 7 – June 27, 2019.With only three features under her belt, Josephine Decker has already established herself as one of the most exhilarating young American filmmakers to have emerged in the 21st century. An actress, writer, director, and multimedia artist, Decker rose to prominence as a performer in a series of films directed by micro-budget wunderkind Joe Swanberg, and although her own directorial work clearly bears signs of the mumblecore aesthetic—handheld Dslr camerawork, improvised dialogue, non-professional actors, frank sexuality, an emphasis on performers and their bodies, an infectious Diy attitude—it also rejects the movement’s slavish adherence to naturalism. Instead, Decker’s cinema occupies a strange position between narrative and experimental cinema, employing intricate strategies of pictorial, aural, and temporal...

Pass the Butter: Decker Cooks Up Female & Peyote Driven Experiment

Serving as a statement more so than a film, Butter on the Latch, tosses away convention and narrative traditions resulting in what can be described as a kooky drug-addled ride that will most likely leave viewers unable to make heads or tails. Much like a dizzying trek through the woods, where coincidentally most of the story takes place, the narrative neglects the use of a compass. Its directionless approach comes off rather frustrating and off putting though there is a rare and uninhibited rawness that gleams every now and then. In her first feature, Josephine Decker, a relatively new filmmaker/artist, chooses to ignore cohesion and consistency in order to provide a sensory abstraction.

In a very Thoreauan gesture, Sarah (Sarah Small) retreats into a the middle of the woods, participating in a Kumbaya-esque camp where the members sing and play in a drum circle,...

Josephine Decker's two first features, Butter on the Latch (2013), with Isolde Chae-Lawrence, Sarah Small and Charlie Hewson, and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014), with Joe Swanberg, Sophie Traub and Robert Longstreet, are opening today in New York—and premiering online, too, right here on Fandor. At Twitch, Christopher Bourne argues that Butter "impressively renders the psychological state of its protagonist in striking visual terms, and represents a wonderful artistic symbiosis among its collaborators." For Kate Erbland at the Dissolve, this "double feature serves as an effective, evocative introduction to Decker, who knows how to subvert demands while still serving up something fresh and compelling." We've got more reviews and trailers. » - David Hudson...

Josephine Decker's two first features, Butter on the Latch (2013), with Isolde Chae-Lawrence, Sarah Small and Charlie Hewson, and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014), with Joe Swanberg, Sophie Traub and Robert Longstreet, are opening today in New York—and premiering online, too, right here on Fandor. At Twitch, Christopher Bourne argues that Butter "impressively renders the psychological state of its protagonist in striking visual terms, and represents a wonderful artistic symbiosis among its collaborators." For Kate Erbland at the Dissolve, this "double feature serves as an effective, evocative introduction to Decker, who knows how to subvert demands while still serving up something fresh and compelling." We've got more reviews and trailers. » - David Hudson...

Elegant and elliptical, Josephine Decker's psychodrama is a blurring of the line between waking and dream states. In Butter on the Latch, the first of her two 70-minute films opening at Ifp Media Center, two women (Isolde Chae-Lawrence and Sarah Small, who improvised their dialogue) have their friendship tested during a Balkan festival/retreat near Mendocino, California. There's something in the woods, and it would appear to know more about them than they do about it: the past traumas that draw them together, the small conflicts that may drive them apart. The abrupt movement and shallow focus of Ashley Connor's arresting cinematography affords us only the most claustrophobic view of their affairs, like an avant-garde reimagining of The Blair Witch Project. ...

“Butter On The Latch” Dir. Josephine Decker, starring Sarah Small, Isolde Chae-Lawrence Indie filmmaker Josephine Decker pulled off one of the major coups of the Berlin Film Festival—a “Double Decker.” A cute phrase to communicate the fact that she had her two debut films, “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely” and “Butter On the Latch,” both accepted and premiering at the Berlinale. It's certainly no small accomplishment and nothing to sneeze at. And while some were taken with Decker’s oblique, dreamy experimentalism that often charted moods of dread with a sensual palate, placing her as a “filmmaker to watch” is perhaps putting the cart before the horse. Decker’s definitely got something, but as unformed and inchoate as it is now, it’s largely a bunch of expressive ideas, atmospheres and cinematic forms that never quite coalesce. “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely,” the film we caught first, was aggravatingly precious and arty,...

★★★☆☆The debut narrative feature from actress and director Josephine Decker, Butter on the Latch (2012) has taken a leisurely journey to this year's Berlinale, arriving at exactly the same time as her Kickstarter funded Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (our festival review here). Relying heavily on improvisation and community collaboration, Decker's work is a curious mixture of impromptu drama and creative restlessness. After a disquieting phone call leaves her concerned for her friend's wellbeing, Sarah (Sarah Small) surprises Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence) by visiting her at a secluded Balkan music workshop in California.