When Pigs Fly. 1993. Germany/USA. Directed by Sara Driver. Screenplay by Driver, Ray Dobbins. With Alfred Molina, Marianne Faithfull, Rachael Bella. 35mm courtesy of the Sara Driver Collection at the Academy Film Archive. 94 min.
Sara Driver is one of the most talented members of the wave of independent narrative filmmakers that emerged in New York in the 1980s and ’90s. Inspired by the 1937 film Topper and the friends she lost to the AIDS epidemic, Sara Driver’s second feature film, When Pigs Fly, is a story about the ghosts who walk among us. Marty (Alfred Molina) is a down-and-out musician who lives in a mess with his enormous dog and gives jazz lessons to folks who don’t seem to want them. When his girlfriend Sheila (Maggie O'Neill) inadvertently gives him a chair haunted by two ghosts—a woman named Lilly (Marianne Faithfull) and a child named Ruthie (Rachael Bella)—these inherited presences allow Marty to see more of his world, both big and small. When Pigs Fly revels in the slippages of reality and dreams, between our world and the next. It’s a representation of how memories and loss shape our everyday existence, sometimes in the most magical ways.
Preceded by
Quest for Happy. 1995. USA. Directed by Marnie Weber. 6 min.
A girl searching for the meaning of happiness leads herself and her animal friends on a quest through a winter landscape.