Jennifer Venditti is a new film director to keep your eye on. Her first film out of the gate is the charming documentary, BILLY THE KID, which is currently screening at the LA Film Festival and also screened at HotDocs and won the audience award at South by Southwest. She speaks on camera with Lisa Murray about her first film.

USA, 2007, 85 min

Directed By: Jennifer Venditti
Producers: Jennifer Venditti, Chiemi Karasawa
Executive Producers: Bob Alexander, Barnet Liberman, Lubov Azria
Cinematographers: Donald Cumming, Paris Kain
Editors: Michael Levine, Enat Sidi
Music: Christian Zucconi, Guy Blakeslee
Featuring: Billy P.

"You'll not soon forget Billy P., the remarkable 15-year-old subject of director Jennifer Venditti's engrossing verité portrait of life, love, and growing up different in small-town Maine. At first, Billy seems like any other awkward teen with a baby moustache. He jams air guitar in his bedroom, lifts weights in emulation of his professional-wrestling heroes, and spends his every waking hour, it seems, thinking and talking about girls. Gradually, however, Billy and his mother reveal to Venditti's empathetic camera a darker, parallel history of behavioral problems, institutionalization, and treatment. While Venditti never names Billy's condition in the film, it's clear that growing up has been a constant struggle both for him and his mom. Throw an absentee father into the mix and, against such a background, what seemed normal—karate lessons, choir practice, a first crush—suddenly takes on heroic dimensions.

Venditti gently shapes the episodes of Billy's life, particularly his budding relationship with a girl who works at the local coffee shop, herself a shy outsider, into a captivating story of family, courage, and acceptance. At its center, always, is Billy, a minor miracle of preternatural wisdom, whose disarming humor and engaging personality make him one of the most memorable presences on American screens in a long, long while."
Paul Malcolm

Check the docu blog http://billythekiddocumentary.blogspot.com/
Watch the video interview by Lisa Murrayon fest21.com The LA Fest blog on Fest21.com
http://www.fest21.com/blog/festivalsinla
Pictured: Producer Chiemi Karasawa, Billy, Spike Jonze, and Director/Producer Jennifer Venditti