199 - Blending Fantasy with Reality in HBO’s Ren Faire

Documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, as well as sound supervisor and re-recording mixer Paul Hsu, join us to discuss their new HBO documentary limited-series, “Ren Faire.” The show details the Succession-like power struggle atop the Texas Renaissance Festival, amid its founder’s impending retirement. It was filmed in an appropriately over-the-top theatrical style, and features some incredible sonic world-building, which — in true Lance Oppenheim style — very cleverly mixes real and fantastical elements... often leaving the line between the two quite grey.

“I've always been obsessed with Abbas Kiarostami's movies and ‘Close-Up,’ which is very formally different than this, but the idea with that film was embracing reenactments, embracing performance, as a form of truth. And to me, with this project, everything you're seeing on the screen is real. But I wanted to also acknowledge that the moment you drop a camera anywhere, you violate the reality. So it's absurd. All of it's absurd. Documentary filmmaking is absurd. Nonfiction storytelling is absurd. So if we can acknowledge that, can we push past it and find something new?”

—Lance Oppenheim, Director, Writer, and Executive Producer, “Ren Faire”

This conversation was recorded in-person, in front of a live audience at Dolby’s screening room in mid-town Manhattan, as part of our ongoing collaboration with the Artist Academy and Film at Lincoln Center.

Be sure to check out “Ren Faire,” with all three episodes now streaming on Max.

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