Glass Eyes of Locust Bayou from Simon Mercer on Vimeo.
Phil Chambliss is a 59-year old filmmaker from rural Arkansas. He makes weird and wonderful films that are a bizarre alter-universe mirroring America.
—
Chambliss has been documenting his rural life in Locust Bayou, Arkansas, for nearly 40 years through his small budget DIY films that straddle between fact and fiction, good and evil.
He worked as a night watchman for the Highway Department for three decades and during the day made his wholly unique, indescribably odd movies starring his neighbors. He is, in short, the area’s resident cult director– akin to, say, John Waters and David Lynch– all tossed into one.
Filming Westerns, holiday epics and obscurely sinister dramas set in funeral homes, pencil stands and daycare centers for birds, his films proudly ignore most classical standards of editing, acting and coherent dialogue. They come complete with titles like To Hell with Lead-Poison and Shadows of the Hatchet Man.
Shot on Super 8mm and later videotape, his movies are filled with absurdist but earnest exchanges, and often seem to exist in a genre of their own making and invention.
“I’m originally from a small town,” filmmaker Simon Mercer said upon first meeting Chambliss, “so there were certain bits that I understood very well and related to, but the rest of it was a completely alien world.”
Glass Eyes of Locust Bayou is an anthropological time capsule of sorts, offering a perfect glimpse into the mind of an affectionate, hilarious and utterly mysterious Arkansas artist and his environment.
“Phil has been going around with a camera since the ’70s just capturing little tidbits of people and places around that area,” Mercer said. That’s what I think is incredible. He’s documenting this whole chunk of Arkansas history and culture and society without even really thinking about it too consciously — better than probably a lot of people are.”
Equally powerful is its presentation of Chambliss’ natural gifts as a storyteller.
“I wish I could have had them all,” Mercer said of the stories, which include tales of hog hangings, attempted murders and an abandoned career as a pornographer.
“There was sex and murder and intrigue and family feuds, every kind of story you could ever hope for. And you’re always straddling this line of not knowing when a story is getting blown out of proportion into fantasy territory. Sometimes it’s with a wink and a nudge, and other times it’s just so wild I didn’t know where the line was.”
Chambliss and his films testify to the notion that there is a filmmaker in many of us, wanting to make movies like the ones we grew up with, the ones we can never forget, the ones we love. His work proves that for the determined and the inventive, it’s a small step from loving movies to making them.
Glass Eyes of Locust Bayou gives a mesmerizing glimpse into the blurred and tangled universe Chambliss inhabits– presenting us with a one of a kind folk artist who creates his own dark and twisted version of Americana exactly as he wishes it to be.
~Via Simon Mercer, Ark Times, and Vimeo
—
by Skippy Massey
This post originally appeared at the Humboldt Sentinel. Reprinted with permission.
—