My Tears Are Dry
2009, 4 min, 16mm
Camera, editing, directing: Laida Lertxundi
Sound: Laida Lertxundi, Lucas Quigley
Music: Laura Steenberge, Hoagy Lands
With: Tanya Rubbak, Laura Steenberge
Location: Los Angeles, California
“Laida Lertxundi’s My Tears Are Dry is something of a coda to her wonderful 2008 film Footnotes to a House of Love. It is a haiku-like sunshiny Southern California riff on Bruce Baillie’s classic All My Life, with a towering palm tree instead of the brambling roses. But the simple, yet elegant, skyward tilt at the end is still there. As with her earlier film, Lertxundi is concerned with the feeling of a location. She creates an off-hand, casual tone that is both comfortable and slightly on edge. The effect is gentler here, but the cross-cutting at the beginning between a woman sprawled on a bed playing snippets of the 1961 Hoagy Landis song “My Tears Are Dry” on a portable cassette deck and a woman plucking discordantly on a guitar sets up an uneasy tension (a slight nod to the “Dueling Banjos” in Deliverance?). It’s the experimental film equivalent of lo-fi pop.”
– Patrick Friel, Senses of Cinema
“My Tears are Dry (2009) is even more minimalist in its riddling structure. Lertxundi cuts between an image of a woman’s torso on a bed, playing and rewinding the same snip of Hoagy Lands’ title ballad, and another woman sitting on a couch strumming a dissonant chord. Out of this frustrated syntax comes blessed continuity. The song breaks through and sets in motion a weightless daydream borrowed from Bruce Baillie’s 1966 single-shot film, All My Life (included on the same program along with other antecedents by Hollis Frampton and Morgan Fisher): in place of his horizontal pan across flowers, Lertxundi tilts her camera up past palms towards the same pale blue sky. Poignant without object, the film delivers a gentle spiritual plea for persistence.”
– Max Goldberg, San Francisco Bay Guardian
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2009, 4 min, 16mm
Camera, editing, directing: Laida Lertxundi
Sound: Laida Lertxundi, Lucas Quigley
Music: Laura Steenberge, Hoagy Lands
With: Tanya Rubbak, Laura Steenberge
Location: Los Angeles, California
“Laida Lertxundi’s My Tears Are Dry is something of a coda to her wonderful 2008 film Footnotes to a House of Love. It is a haiku-like sunshiny Southern California riff on Bruce Baillie’s classic All My Life, with a towering palm tree instead of the brambling roses. But the simple, yet elegant, skyward tilt at the end is still there. As with her earlier film, Lertxundi is concerned with the feeling of a location. She creates an off-hand, casual tone that is both comfortable and slightly on edge. The effect is gentler here, but the cross-cutting at the beginning between a woman sprawled on a bed playing snippets of the 1961 Hoagy Landis song “My Tears Are Dry” on a portable cassette deck and a woman plucking discordantly on a guitar sets up an uneasy tension (a slight nod to the “Dueling Banjos” in Deliverance?). It’s the experimental film equivalent of lo-fi pop.”
– Patrick Friel, Senses of Cinema
“My Tears are Dry (2009) is even more minimalist in its riddling structure. Lertxundi cuts between an image of a woman’s torso on a bed, playing and rewinding the same snip of Hoagy Lands’ title ballad, and another woman sitting on a couch strumming a dissonant chord. Out of this frustrated syntax comes blessed continuity. The song breaks through and sets in motion a weightless daydream borrowed from Bruce Baillie’s 1966 single-shot film, All My Life (included on the same program along with other antecedents by Hollis Frampton and Morgan Fisher): in place of his horizontal pan across flowers, Lertxundi tilts her camera up past palms towards the same pale blue sky. Poignant without object, the film delivers a gentle spiritual plea for persistence.”
– Max Goldberg, San Francisco Bay Guardian
download press release
back