HUDSON HEIGHTS — An Uptown filmmaker's new short about how real estate can interfere in city relationships will debut this weekend at New York City International Film Festival.
Michael Manese’s short film “Maxine,” an intimate look at a breakup, will screen this Sunday at the festival. The film uses non-linear storytelling to explore the way people connect with their memories.
“It’s about a guy who’s moving out of his apartment and he’s thinking about some of the stuff he went through with his girlfriend who lived with him at the time,” said Manese, 46.
From moments of pillow talk to fights over who was supposed to pick up the dry cleaning, Manese allows the audience to witness the highs and lows of his characters’ relationship at very close range.
“I wanted it to feel really intimate, to the point that the audience would almost be like, ‘What am I doing here?’” Manese said.
Manese described “Maxine” as a more experimental and less light-hearted piece than his other one, with a non-linear and — in some moments — surreal story.
“The story I’m telling has been told so many times before: the beginning, middle and end of a relationship,” Manese said. “I wanted to tell it in a different way where it maybe starts in the middle or starts at the end.”
Throughout the film, the two characters disagree about many things, but the main conflict involves a possible move from Manhattan to New Jersey. Manese called that mix of love and real estate a very New York story.
The filmmaker went through a similar process a few years ago when he wanted to buy an apartment but found himself priced out of the Harlem neighborhood where he had lived for nearly a decade.
He eventually found a new home off of the 190th Street A train stop.
While Manese can relate to his male character’s desire to buy a home and put down roots, he said they are different in one crucial way.
“My character is way more practical than I am,” he said. “I’m not ready to move to the suburbs.”
This is Manese’s second appearance at the New York City International Film Festival. His film “When bart6847 Met lulu5547,” a short about two senior citizens looking for love in the digital age, screened at the 2013 festival.
Manese is currently working on his next film, “The Pleasures of Being Served,” about the relationship between a domestic worker and her boss. He also hopes to create a short film for the inaugural Inwood Film Festival in February 2016.
