For those in Los Angeles, meanwhile, the estimable Ray Greene mentioned
to me that the American Cinematheque’s sneak preview, “Alternative
Screen” presentation of The Limbo Room on Thursday, July 20
features a striking new voice in American independent film in the form
of actress-turned-director Debra Eisenstadt. Both David Mamet fans and
disgruntled college professors, of course, will remember Eisenstadt —
who made her debut as a writer-director with 2001’s Daydream Believer
— from the 1994 film version of Mamet’s incendiary two-hander Oleanna, in which
she played the female lead opposite William H. Macy. Both that
experience and the text of Oleanna itself inform this feature, which Greene calls “an intriguing blend of Michael Haneke and All About Eve,”
about the blurring of reality and fiction in the lives of a group of
New York stage actors working on a play involving an onstage rape. The
film played at Slamdance earlier this year, and is currently seeking
North American distribution. More to soon follow…