NUTS!, from associate professor Penny Lane, will premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival
NUTS!, a new documentary film by assistant professor of art and art history Penny Lane, will premiere at next month’s Sundance Film Festival. NUTS! tells the story of John Romulus Brinkley, who, in 1917, offered a cure for impotence by transplanting goat testicles.
“Sundance is by far the premiere venue to launch an American independent feature film,” Lane said. “I was overjoyed by the invitation, and I am really excited to see how the audience there responds to the film.”
The New York Times, citing the festival’s lineup guide, reports, “In keeping with a recent trend in documentary filmmaking, nontraditional, sometimes controversial storytelling techniques will be on full display [at Sundance] … The director Penny Lane, for instance, uses animated re-enactments and ‘one seriously unreliable narrator’ to trace the ‘mostly true’ story of a man who found success selling a goat-testicle impotence cure.”
Penny Lane
Lane’s previous credits include Our Nixon, a documentary featuring home movies shot by President Richard Nixon’s aides, and The Voyagers, a short film about “two small spacecraft, an epic journey, taking risks, and falling in love. Also Carl Sagan.” Lane traveled the hemisphere in search of background information for NUTS! Her expeditions — and the film itself — were funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Colgate University Research Council, and a successful $80,000 Kickstarter campaign.
“A campaign like that has the added effect of creating a small but enthusiastic army of fans who feel like they were in it ‘from the beginning.,’” Lane said.
Find out more at brinkleyfilm.com and, in the weeks ahead, on the Sundance Film Festival website.