My Sarong Song film is getting noticed at film festivals worldwide.
Sarong Song is song #2 of The Soul Fox, a song cycle composed in 2013 by Lori Laitman to a poem by David Mason, her frequent collaborator. The cycle set Mason’s autobiographical poems to create a narrative about the upheaval in Dave’s life as his second marriage dissolved. This song seizes on the moment Dave from Colorado met Chrissy from Tasmania — and her mesmerizing effect on him, which later resulted in their marriage and move to Tasmania. The film alternates between a superb performance of Laitman’s melodic music by mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Simon Lepper and slow animation created from famed illustrator Ian Beck’s custom watercolors. The musical blending of these elements by director Jeremy Hamway-Bidgood creates a new kind of film — a hybrid presentation of classical song, poetry, and original art.