Coming to DVD this coming Tuesday, March 15: THE PARKING LOT MOVIE
Director Meghan Eckman made her documentary feature debut with this look at Charlottesville, VA’s Corner Parking and its many attendants through the years. The film premiered at SXSW last year and went on to screen at Hot Docs, BFI London, and RIDM, among others. It had a limited theatrical release via the reRun Gastropub Theater this past August and also screened on Independent Lens in the Fall.
THE PARKING LOT MOVIE is an incredibly likeable film – Eckman ‘s subjects, the owner and past and present employees of the small business, are an eclectic group, perhaps unified in a general slacker nature. Beyond that, with the film’s small college town setting, many of the attendants are or were students, hailing largely from the anthropology and sociology department, and as a result are prone to philosophizing about their experiences, even as they relate anecdotes about cheapskate customers and drunk frat boys looking to pick a fight while they’re on duty. After all, as the film’s tagline reminds us, “It’s not just a parking lot, it’s a battle with humanity.” It’s a doc that anyone who’s ever suffered the tedium of and frustration with an unskilled job can relate to, and bears a look now that it’s coming to DVD.
what (not) to doc 