Squeaky Wheel
712 Main St, Buffalo 14202

Award-winning documentary film about eccentric performance artist and Nut Museum curator, Elizabeth Tashjian (a.k.a the "Nut Lady") makes its Buffalo debut at Squeaky Wheel!

Director Don Bernier will be present at the western New York premiere of the feature-length documentary, In a Nutshell: A Portrait of Elizabeth Tashjian on April 1, 2006 (no fooling). Official selection from Slamdance to the Los Angeles Film Festival, Bernier's film recently won a Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival and was nominated for a 2005 Gotham Award by IFP-New York and Filmmaker Magazine. Bernier, who received his graduate degree in Media Study & Art from UB in 1994, will be present for a Q&A after the screening at Squeaky Wheel.

WHAT (Film Description):

"As an art student in the 1930s, Elizabeth Tashjian began painting still-lifes of nuts. Over the years her interest grew into a good-natured obsession, and at the age of 60, she established the Nut Museum on the first floor of her Victorian home in the hamlet of Old Lyme, Connecticut. For the
admission price of $3 and one nut, Tashjian would give visitors guided tours of her collection, combining her love of the nut with her belief in the
"power of art and song" to educate. The flashes of fame that followed, including multiple appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and
Late Night with David Letterman, had her treated more as a curiosity than a serious artist, a reputation she did little to downplay--until the day the state deemed her incompetent. It would have been easy to portray Tashjian as simply a "character," yet another troubled artist caught in the lens of American independent documentarians, but director Don Bernier goes deeper.
With sensitivity and insight, he delves into Tashjian's privileged past and her current position as a 93 year-old woman without any friends or family, bringing to light the gender and age-related biases that led to her losing her home and her life's work. In a Nutshell emerges as a well-rounded portrait of an idiosyncratic individual who continues to fight, not just for the glory of the nut, but also for her long cherished independence."
- Doug Jones, 2005 Los Angeles Film Festival

WHEN/WHERE:

Saturday, April 1, 2006, at 8:00pm:
Squeaky Wheel, 712 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14202 (Filmmaker in attendance)
For more info: http://www.squeaky.org/

PRESS:

"A well-crafted journey into a corner of odd Americana... Bernier clearly 'gets' Tashjian's obsession with the nut as a living entity redolent with humor, texture, variety and even mystery."
- Robert Koehler, Variety

"Sometimes what beguiles you engulfs you... Bernier's well-salted portrait gets to the pithy core of Tashjian's unusual passions."
- Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive

"Bernier's refreshing documentary reveals... the talented, classically trained artist underneath all the nuts... Tashjian here receives a fun,
poignant and heartrending portrait that never condescends, giving the nonagenarian the dignity she deserves."
- Kim Morgan, LA Weekly

"A searing tale... of outsiderness, aging & gender based bias."
- Jim Fouratt, Reel Deal

INFO/CONTACT:

Don Bernier
Director/Producer of "In a Nutshell"
mimetic media

don@mimeticmedia.com

http://www.mimeticmedia.com/projects.asp?project=nutshell