2017/experimental/14min.
A naked body moves a stranger to empathy. Inspired by The Kuleshov Effect, PARTHENON is a slippery diptych that questions the limits of our perception.
A recipient of the 2015 Oak Cliff Film Festival Filmmaker's Grant and made with the generous participation of the New York Academy of Art, the film dissects objectification and the male gaze that has perpetuated throughout history. It is a movie about the need to be seen.
Starring Lily Baldwin, Tallie Medel, and Thiago Martins.
Now streaming on NoBudge, ASFF, Vimeo, and Kinoscope.
SCREENINGS:
-2017 Sarasota Film Festival (world premiere)
-2017 Maryland Film Festival
-2017 Oak Cliff Film Festival
-2017 Marfa Film Festival
-2017 Eastern Oregon Film Festival
-2017 Cucalorus Film Festival
-2018 Slamdance Film Festival (Narrative Shorts competition)
-2018 George Lindsey UNA Film Festival (Vanguard competition)
-2018 FilmFort Festival
-2018 Houston Film Commission Showcase
-2018 Micro Wave Cinema Series
-2018 RSC Shorts Festival (Denver Film Society)
-2018 Brooklyn Film Festival
-2018 The Spectacle Theater, NYC
-2018 Middle Coast Film Festival
-2018 Aesthetica Short Film Festival (international premiere)
-2018 Triskel Arts Centre (+ShortFilm, Cork, Ireland)
PRESS:
"Deeply intimate. A rich, elusive network of ideas and responses... it is a film that invites us into a tactile engagement with its many surfaces. One of the best films of 2017." -Michael Ewins, Notes on Seeing
"A minimal work of pure tension. The personal and the communal resound strongly…with delicate direction of its actors."
-Jose Sarmiento Hinojosa, DESISTFILM
“A miracle of economy. Finely observed, conceptually audacious and formally assured, Mosley’s filmmaking reflects a remarkable maturity and ambition rarely exhibited in the contemporary landscape of low-budget American cinema.” -James Slaymaker, Vague Visages
“A conceptual potboiler… that is devastating to watch. Mosley connects the dots between what we choose to see and what we don’t, and the cultural conditioning that goes into these choices, as well as what it means to see someone in full. It’s quite a bit to accomplish in less than 15 minutes, but Parthenon does so and lingers in the mind for far longer.” -Stephen Saito, The Moveable Fest
“An exercise in simplicity and non-verbal expression, the film captivates in surprising and mysterious ways. Carried by the transfixing presence of Lily Baldwin… and the equally magnetic Tallie Medel…their gazes lock into a profound staring contest.” - Kentucker Audley, NoBudge
“His fascination with matters of identity, memory, and temporality bleed through every frame of his films – few directors working today can touch Mosley’s narrative and media savvy.” -The Spectacle Theater, New York City
“While Frank is widely known for his acting roles in countless independent shorts and feature films (Upstream Color, Thunder Road), he is also emerging as a director in his own right.” -Adam Schartoff, FilmWax Radio
“Director Frank Mosley exposes the raw intimacy of human interaction in its purest form. All of his works flawlessly submerge us into a world of evocative psychological splendor, seeping deep into our subconscious like a magnificent dream we want never to end.” -Alexa Modugno, FRONTRUNNER MAGAZINE
“Although rooted in traditional notions of character psychology and emotional affect, the film is also deeply experimental in its employment of structure and abstraction of spatiotemporal relations.” -David Hudson, Criterion Daily
“Frank Mosley’s experimental short about empathy run amok isn’t for all tastes, but it is to ours. The Arlington filmmaker created the film in 2015 using money earned as the first recipient of the Oak Cliff Film Festival Filmmakers Grant. Mosley moved to Austin recently, but we still love him and his unique take on Greek tragedy in a modern and perhaps supernatural world.” - Fort Worth Weekly, *Critics Choice Award - Locally Made Film*
"We've featured the work of Frank Mosley on our site before, and we're happy to share the trailer for his latest short, Parthenon." -Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine
"It’s a film of two parts. The first a decidedly Lily Baldwin affair utilizing her expressionistic movements to full effect, a push-pull of domestic dominance. While the second half presents the opposite wherein sustained eye contact has the ability to emotional affect without any words being uttered." -Kevin Rakestraw, Film Pulse
“An incredible central performance by Lily Baldwin.” -Fiona Underhill, Jump Cut Online
“NYC Weekend Watch: ‘Andrei Rublev,’ Frank Mosley, ‘Ziggy Stardust,’ & More.” -Nick Newman, The Film Stage
“These Dallas-based artists have captured empathy, wonder and ‘wordless thoughts’ on film.” -Christian Vasquez, Dallas Morning News