New Orleans Film Festival 2009

45365 explores the congruities of daily life in an American town—Sidney, Ohio. Through a patient and inquisitive look at the lives and landscapes that make up this community of 20,000, it captures the complexities and ambiguities of their shared experience. Conclusions are left to the audience as the component characters speak and act for themselves, as themselves. Multiple storylines eventually coalesce into a mosaic of faces, places, and events. Set against this quaint and familiar backdrop, this is a film about the inner workings of a community and the ways in which its people interact and socialize. From the patrol car to the courtroom, the playground to the nursing home, the parade to the prayer service, it explores their relationships and interactions – with each other and their environment. Fathers and sons, boyfriends and girlfriends, cops and criminals, officials and the electorate, patrons and providers—it is a portrait of the city and its people, people somehow not unfamiliar in a landscape that becomes increasingly understood. Void of direct interviews or staging, 45365 presents the residents of the town as they are in their daily lives. Using a series of long kinetic shots, the viewer is enabled to exist in real time with those being documented. The camera closes in on the mechanics of the moment with spontaneity and sincerity, acting as a clairvoyant conduit to a time now past. Through the people we see the town.