Screenings: The Slums of Beverly Hills with Family Remains, The Savages

Like the characters in her seminal film The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), six-year-old Tamara Jenkins lived with her family on the outer edges of Beverly Hills, always staying within the confines of the famous zip code so that she and her brothers could have the advantage of a good school system. Jenkins schooled and played with the wealthy, but left for college to pursue acting and performance art. Eventually landing in the 1980s rent-controlled artist mecca of New York’s East Village, she experienced continued success with her avant-garde performances.

In 1990, Jenkins moved from stage to screen, enrolling in the Graduate Filmmaking program at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts, where she was widely hailed for her directorial debut, Fugitive Love, which made it to Sundance. The success led the Independent Television Service to commission Jenkins to write and direct a family-themed short, resulting in Family Remains, an even bigger success that earned Special Recognition awards at both the Sundance and Locarno Film Festivals.

Following Jenkins’ pair of Sundance successes, she was invited to join the Sundance Institute. There, Jenkins began developing her first feature, The Slums of Beverly Hills, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy. Well-received at its Cannes premiere in 1998, and with Robert Redford as its executive producer, the film went on to be a critically acclaimed indie hit.

While many writer-directors might head straight to Hollywood and scramble to move up in the industry, Jenkins decided instead to focus on writing and spent several years at an artist community in upstate New York, working with other writers in intensive workshops. Already an accomplished Writer-Director, Jenkins at this time revisited acting, appearing in several successful indie films.

The Savages (2007), her much-anticipated follow-up to Slums, premiered at Sundance this year, revealing an independent voice that could only come from an unconventional artist far removed from the pressures of Hollywood. Starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as middle-aged adults siblings who, after the death of their mother, are suddenly forced to care for their estranged father who suffers from dementia, The Savages has touched a nerve with audiences and critics alike, showcasing Jenkins’ ability to elicit complex emotional reactions to her characters without resorting to clichés. And it reinforced that one should never discourage Jenkins from retreating from the public eye, since she will return with something new and powerful.