In this interview, I speak with Kim Albright and Anna Maguire, the director and star of "With Love and a Major Organ", which debuted at SXSW 2023 and is now having its Canadian premier at Fantasia Fest 2023. In this interview, we talk about the movies that inspire them, the most challenging moments to film, the role of color in the story, and how they adapted the movie from a play. Lastly, we all share what objects our hearts would be made of if we lived in this algorithmic world.
See the information about Fantasia screening: https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/with-love-and-a-major-organ
Description of the movie: Anabel lives in a world controlled by the algorithm, but her bold and bohemian lifestyle puts her at odds with her peers. After a series of devastating rejections, Anabel’s pain becomes unbearable. She decides to remove her heart and give it to George (Hamza Haq), the object of her affection. This unexpected gift turns George’s world upside down and sends him on a journey of discovery. George and Anabel’s lives join and diverge at different points, but like the web of red thread we see in the cold opening, their stories are intrinsically linked after their fateful meeting in the park.
Movie website: https://www.withloveandamajororgan.com/
Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/withlove.andamajororgan/
Read my review of the movie: https://elementsofmadness.com/2023/03/24/wlaamo/
About Kim Albright: Kim Albright is an award-winning Canadian-British-Filipina film director who has won many awards for her short films. With Love and a Major Organ is her feature length debut.She is an alumna of the Canadian Film Centre Directors Lab, the Canadian Academy Director's Program for Women, and Women In the Director's Chair (WIDC) Story & Leadership, and a recipient of the CBC Films WIDC Talent Development Award and the WIDC Feature Film Award.
About Anna Maguire: Anna Maguire is a British/Canadian writer, director and actress. Her directorial work has screened at festivals including TIFF, Palm Springs, PÖFF Black Nights and the BFI London Film Festival where she was nominated for Best Short with Your Mother and I in 2016. She has won awards at The London Short Film Festival, Thessaloniki, Rhode Island, and Underwire among others, was long listed for a BAFTA, and nominated for Best Short at the 2018 London Critics’ Circle Awards. As an actress, Anna recently performed in Kim Nguyen’s The Hummingbird Project alongside Salma Hayek, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard and can be seen in the upcoming film Violation by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli. She is currently writing her first feature An Empty Space supported by BFI NETWORK.
About the interviewer: Lindsey Dunn aka @1ofmystories is a film critic with membership in both NC Film Critics and Southeastern Film Critics. She loves all things Cobra Kai, Netflix Dark, indie horror, and any stories about complicated relationships.
