After the heady start to The Creeping Garden’s North American release in New York at the end of September, where team slime set up camp in the Soho district of Manhattan, the film is now spreading its tendrils across Canada and the US through to December.
But as it began in NYC, its a perfect opportunity to catch up on some of the highlights that were part of this fantastic trip for directors Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp along with our US distributor Ryan Levey.
On the night of our opening we had the great pleasure of being guests at the apartment of Dr. Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms, and whilst chatting with other members of the New York Mycological Society who also attended, it became vividly clear how deep a passion exists for mycology and indeed the extended world of slime mould in the city, and why perhaps The Creeping Garden had found an ideal home for a week at Film Forum. Indeed, throughout the films run, school children, science and nature heads old and young, and other unclassifiable and curious cinema goers seemed drawn to the film in such an enthusiastic way that we experienced some of our most animated and probing Q & A’s, often spilling into the foyer and beyond.
The Film Forum itself was like a cinephile dream, dedicating a large part of their grand foyer to our posters, stills and press. Flanked by promo for the latest Guy Maddin film and the excellent Black Panthers documentary was some seriously good company, but it was the name spelled out on the front of the cinema that was perhaps highlight number one, as well as the beautifully offset text above the portal into the screen itself.
There was a splitting of the team for a couple of days as Jasper travelled out of town to present screenings in Philadelphia, so Ryan and Tim stayed back to talk to Leonard Lopate on WYNC and In possibly one of the the more surreal incidents on our trip to New York, Ryan took Tim to meet the very excitable Seth Rudetsky at Sirius XM where we were even greeted with an impromptu slime mould song.
On his return, Jasper and Tim headed to Genspace in Brooklyn. Genspace is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting citizen science and access to biotechnology, and one of its co-founders Daniel Grushkin was also a contributor in The Creeping Garden - and it was a delight to meet again after we last left him tying strangers together with yellow rope in Rotterdam. To a fascinatingly diverse crowd, Jasper presented a talk on the extended lives and research into slime mould and also did a reading from his Creeping Garden book, before Tim joined in to elaborate on the process of making the film.
In all it was a rollercoaster of events stacked one after another, many of which have faded from memory since our arrival back in the relative normality of the UK. But what felt particularly satisfying was that even though we had left North America, our film had stayed behind on its own continuing adventure, visiting an array of wonderful old independent cinemas. To have the opportunity to be playing in these venues with our cinematic slime oddity is quite fantastic and a bit of a childhood dream fulfilled.
Carrying on throughout November and December a full list of screenings can be found right here,
