Jell-O is a symbol, multi-faceted and elusive; it’s silly, playful, funereal, American. It’s made from bones. Powder House, adapted from Molly Gallentine’s 2011 M.F.A. graduate thesis, is a Super 8 film bringing to the screen her collection of short stories and vignettes—whose center is Jell-O. The structure of the film is nuanced, meaning, it prefers to proceed via suggestive images rather than through traditional channels of chronology. Blending historical research, with personal reminiscence and a morbid curiosity, the short film pays homage to a universal disappearance of childhood, and the narrator’s own sense of coming to peace with a past that is dead.
Tonight, join filmmakers Molly Gallentine and Brandon Covey for a screening of the film at Observatory, followed by a brief Q & A.
