FLIPSIDE
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. FLIPSIDE documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisiting other documentary projects he has abandoned over the years. In the process, Wilcha captures This American Life icon Ira Glass in the midst of a creative rebirth, discovers the origin story of David Bowie’s ode to a local New Jersey cable television hero, and uncovers the unlikely connection between jazz photographer Herman Leonard and TV writer David Milch. This disparate collection of stories coheres into something strange and expansive—a moving meditation on music, work, and the sacrifices and satisfaction of trying to live a creative life.
“FLIPSIDE is about more than one person or one record shop. It’s about the quest to find purpose in art and vocation. But more than that, this finished film is about forgiving yourself for things not working out as you planned and making peace with the present by creating something new with the pieces of past failings.” —Kristy Puchko, MASHABLE
“Triumphant… [FLIPSIDE is] a leap forward in the documentary genre, a supercut of nearly all the hallmarks of what it takes to make these sorts of films as much as what it takes to make them attractive.” —Brian Farvour, THE PLAYLIST
“A moving, funny, inventive film that may cause viewers to follow Wilcha’s lead and ask tough questions about their own lives. That is no small feat for a documentarian.” —Christopher Schobert, THE FILM STAGE
“[A] documentary that is filled with joyful images of record albums, brilliant photographs, and choice bits of jazz and Boomer music and culture.” – Jason Gorber, POV MAGAZINE