Plywood
Featuring Matt Barats • 15-Mar-2018
A young man attempts to get to the bottom of his childhood memories of plywood in this amusingly mundane documentary short by Christian Kozlowski. From as far back as he can remember, Christian’s dad had always used plywood to build houses, and he assumes that he still does. This assumption goes under the gun in this action-packed (not really) exploration of house building materials. Told through a series of on-screen titles (using a hilariously basic font and informal wording: “Until this September, I thought he was using plywood all this time,”) and a couple of phone calls to his harried father who explains that plywood has gone out of favor replaced by something called OSB. Mind blown. There’s nothing particularly cinematic about it (unless you consider a fixed shot of a piece of wood for 2 minutes cinematic) but that’s the point. “Plywood” finds humor in its own harebrained existence. For its depiction of a young man with interests his father doesn’t quite understand (experimental filmmaking in this case), it makes for a unintentional companion piece to “Improv is Love,” the recent film by Doron Max Hagay and Matt Barats about a young comic prioritizing his improv trope over his sick father. “Plywood” isn’t as overt, but it arrives at a similar connection point that elevates the endeavor beyond avant-garde goof.
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