CISCO KID

SLAMDANCE 2023 Reviews: Emily Kaye Allen’s CISCO KID looks at a queer woman creating an unexpectedly American paradise

By Luke Y. Thompson 3 years ago

The movie’s more concerned with her making the place reasonably functional first, without as much emphasis on the artistic nature of it. But as the kind of fly-on-the-wall doc that doesn’t offer additional context nor narration, it shifts that burden to the viewer. It matters less what the artist thinks than whether you see the art there, even if the hands that form it appear more practicality minded.

SLAMDANCE 2023 Interviews: CISCO KID director Emily Kaye Allen

By John Wildman 3 years ago

My personal thoughts: This is another film that I am currently working with as their publicist, so naturally I think it’s wonderful. This might be an odd way to compliment a documentary, but when I watched CISCO KID the first time, I kept thinking of Altman films or Malick films, because the combination of an independent, enigmatic character at the center of a story set with in a truly significant landscape is what I so often associate with that cinema when I hear those names. Allen and her camera become trusted companions to a charismatic, yet fiercely independent personality who hearkens back to a different time in their pursuit of restoring structure and life to a literal ghost town in the desert.