The Sky is Blue with Lies
Late 70s, downtown NYC, bar scene. Fara, the barkeep’s young wife, falls in love with her beautiful stepson, Po, just back from California. Early 80s, a filmmaker goes back to the witnesses and players, who tell the story of the tragedy. It’s Phaedra and Hippolytus, shot in a cool-tempered No Wave style. Written and directed by author John Reed, the film stars Sini Hill as Fara and John Busa as Po, and features Marissa Merrill and Jeremy Williams, as well as downtown celebrities Theodore Bouloukos, Jason Griffin, Sunny Hitt, Heather Litteer, James Patrick Nelson, Lori Parquet, Gabrielle Penabaz, Michael Wiener and Caitlin Zoz.
The Sky Is Blue With Lies sees creative origin in the films of Andy Warhol, New York B cinema, and the No Wave movement of the early 80s, the scene of the director’s childhood. Contemporary technology, DSLRs and post production effects achieve No Wave’s splendor of dissipation in a narrative feature.
In Greek mythology, Phaedra, not needing love, raises the ire of Aphrodite. Jealous of the mortal’s beauty, Aphrodite curses Phaedra to fall in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. Dionysus, Aphrodite’s sibling and tempestuous consort, enacts the destruction of the near-to-be lovers. Incarnated in The Sky Is Blue with Lies, the myth is set at TRIBECA’s fabled tavern, Magoo’s, and the traditional Greek chorus is assembled in the bargoers who were there.
Reed’s ‘TRIBECA Phaedra’ follows in the footsteps of Euripides, Seneca, Jean Racine, Marguerite Yourcenar, Mary Renault, Jules Dassin, Nancy Sinatra and many others. But Reed so fluidly brings Phaedra to downtown NYC that it’s hard to imagine it anywhere else. The film is starkly immediate, with characters who arouse our deepest trust and our deepest desires. The performances are so natural that viewers repeatedly ask themselves, ‘did this really happen?’ And the filmmaking itself, frame to frame, is so painstakingly beautiful, so right, that to see it is if to remember it. The Sky Is Blue With Lies is a lush, wonderful and terrible dream, and viewers will awake wiser and stronger, and knowing that much more about love.
FESTIVALS
AWARDS & HONORS
—2020 Open Window International Festival, Best Experimental Feature
—2019 Cult Film Critics Film Festival, Best Experimental Film
—2019 After Hours Film Festival, Best Score
FINALISTS
—2019 Florence Film Awards, Experimental Film
SEMI-FINALISTS, NOMINEES & SELECTED
—2022 The Gladiator Film Festival
—2022 Watch Out International Film Festival
—2020 Vonlinefilmfest
—2020 Mabig Film Festival
—2020 Top Indie Awards
—2019 The Block Festival
—2019 Art is Alive Film Festival
—2018 Greenpoint Film Festival
—2018 NewFilmakers at Anthology Film Archives