JUNE 22, 2024
1:30 PM
BISHOP ARTS THEATRE CENTER
215 South Tyler Street, Dallas, Texas
Resident alum Pete Ohs’ narrative feature film Love And Work will screen at this year’s Oak Cliff Film Festival in Dallas, Texas. This noir-esque, wry, poignant film, his fourth narrative feature, was shot entirely on location in downtown Corsicana, particularly the Residency’s former auxiliary studio space, the Samuels Building.
Ohs makes small, independent films “very much inspired by a location,” as Ohs himself says. Love and Work presents a love story between Diane and Fox, who inhabit a period that represents “the past of a different future,” when “more than enough people recognized that more than enough things had been made . . . for the foreseeable future,” and therefore jobs are illegal. What follows, as a certain population still derives fulfillment from the now-illicit “work,” is a scenario at once oneiric and humorous, borrowing from the noir tradition but deeply relevant to our era with its investigation and gentle mockery of capitalist and consumerist trappings. The haunting sounds of the town’s passing train creates the black-and-white film’s background.
A 100 West writing resident (screenwriting) in 2016, Ohs has returned frequently to Corsicana, including in 2021, when he discovered the newly acquired, circa1880s Samuels Building. “Immediately, my mind started to turn and imagine What would I do if I could play here?” Ohs says. For the film, shot over two weeks, Ohs cast actor collaborators, Corsicana residents, and the 100 West residents living on site at the time.
“It was a beautiful experience,” Ohs says. “This magical, unexpected thing happened, which is that Corsicana became a movie studio backlot. Because that downtown is so sleepy, we barely saw anyone. We were filming in late May, so we had these hot summer Texas nights. And we would be in the back alleys off of Beaton Street, with a couple movie lights and our camera, like kids making a movie. There was no ‘real world’ around us. That feeling was surreal and I’m so grateful that it happened. I think that’s a big part of how the movie got made. It just felt so good. So contained and supported.”
The Samuels Building, two blocks south of 100 West, served as a rough auxiliary studio space for several years. The film therefore lingers as an immortalizing trace. “I’m super happy there’s a film to document that space,” Ohs says. “Both in the history of 100 West and in the history of buildings in Corsicana. Buildings change, as do artists, as does art, as do lives.”
“I’m also happy that Love and Work presents 100 West at another level, at another platform,” Ohs says of Oak Cliff Film Festival, a festival “by filmmakers, for filmmakers.” “For more people to see ‘100 West – Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency’ on a big theater screen is very exciting.”
Ohs’ current ongoing projects include editing a movie shot and directed last year in Massachusetts as well as co-editing a film he co-wrote, produced, and shot in Baltimore, Maryland. He is in the early stages of planning another feature film from his current base in Warsaw, Poland.
About Pete Ohs
Pete Ohs is a four-time regional Emmy Award winner and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2013. In 2017, he wrote and directed Everything Beautiful Is Far Away, a sci-fi fable. Hailed by Indiewire as “a rising filmmaker well worth the attention,” his most recent feature is the critically acclaimed deadpan horror-satire Jethica, which premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival and received theatrical distribution from Cinedesign in 2023. Ohs completed his initial screenwriting residency at 100 West in 2016 and returned in 2017 for a Corsicana premiere of Everything Beautiful is Far Away. He shot Love and Work on site in 2022. Ohs’ work was the last resident project in the Samuels Building before it was sold.
Premier at Slamdance Film Festival, January 2024.
Pete Ohs, first in residence at 100W in 2016.