First Run / Icarus Films is pleased to announce the release of CUL DE SAC. This new documentary examines a working class suburb in decline through the story of Shawn Nelson, a man who stormed his neighborhood streets with a stolen tank.
CUL DE SAC: A SUBURBAN WAR STORY Directed by Garrett Scott
In May 1995, Shawn Nelson, a 35 year-old plumber from Clairemont, California, emerged from an eighteen foot mine shaft he had dug beneath his backyard in search for gold. An ex-soldier and methamphetamine abuser, he stole a tank from a nearby National Guard armory and went on a rampage through the residential streets of his neighborhood, crushing cars and lampposts until the cops took him down.
CUL DE SAC goes far beyond this apparently minor news story and provides extensive political, economic and social context that ties Nelson's life to the larger story of a working class community in decline. Footage of the tank chase punctuates this bleak tale of the transformation of a thriving defense-industry town of the Cold War era into a San Diego suburb that has decayed into a desperate strip-mall wasteland. Newsreel footage of a fat, happy San Diego in the 50s and 60s representing middle class aspirations of economic prosperity is juxtaposed with 90s images of shuttered defense plants, jobless blue-collar suburbanites, drug abuse, and police on patrol. Statements by cops, historians and real estate agents sketch out the rise and fall of this Pentagon-fueled boomtown, tracing the neighborhood's social ills back to World War II, the Vietnam war and recent layoffs.
"Brilliant... Each time CUL DE SAC revisits Nelson's low-speed tank chase, he seems less like a standard-issue nut-job loner and more like a military/industrial Frankenstein's monster, haunted by (and hunted for) other people's sins." - New York Press
** 2002 Toronto International Film Festival ** Best Director, 2002 CinemaTexas International Film Festival ** 2002 Chicago Underground Film Festival ** 2002 New York Underground Film Festival ** 2002 CineVegas Film Festival ** 2002 Flaherty Film Seminar
56 minutes / Color / 2001 / V2K F23 Sale/video: $390 Rental/video: $75
* Please refer to Order #'s on all purchase orders and written requests. * Free preview for purchase consideration available. * Purchase price includes Public Performance Rights. * Canadian Rights are available for this title.
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