American transience is the subject of Lay Down Tracks, a beguilingly direct and engagingly unpretentious ultra-low-budget documentary produced, directed, photographed and edited by first-time film-makers Lombardi and McCaffrey. No matter what the actual cost of production (the suspiciously-precise figure of $14,364 has been cited) McCaffrey and Lombardi clearly know how to get the very most out of limited means.

Their tools were chiefly a 16mm camera and a tape-recorder, resulting in a film which makes a creative virtue out of the absence of conventional "synch" sound. The simplicity of their equipment plays a major part in the intimacy with which Lombardi and McCaffrey record their subjects: we hear from (and see) five very different Americans - a retired carnival-worker; a (young, female) trucker; a railroad executive (who, presumably non-coincidentally, shares a surname with film-maker McCaffrey); a riverboat pilot who happens to be a nun, and a surfer who happens to be a chimney-sweep. All are articulate and reflective individuals, who speak about how they make their living, and what travel has come to means to them - reminiscent less of previous films, than of books such as William Least Heat-Moon's picaresque masterpiece Blue Highways.

These are journeys which are parallel, never physically intersecting: they are 'joined' only by their encounters with the film-makers, and as elements of the journey made through the film made by the viewer. And it's a pleasurable, hour-long trip, as we move from place from place to atmospheric place (captured via some rough-edged but often striking camerawork) and from voice to articulate voice, sound and image occasionally dovetailing, occasionally diverging, occasionally forming an arresting counterpoint.

The surfer/sweep and railroad executive have travelled far beyond their country's borders (the one for holiday/adventure, the other for work) and the film includes extracts from the surfer/sweep's own 8mm 'home-movies,' and follows the executive into South America - these sections adding an extra dimension to what's largely a specifically national focus. Indeed, Lay Down Tracks ultimately emerges as a casually democratic collage of 'found' Americana, poised at a fruitful, underexplored midpoint between anthropological survey and by-the-people-for-the-people folk-art.

Neil Young
7th November, 2006

LAY DOWN TRACKS : [7/10] : USA 2006 : Danielle LOMBARDI & Brigid McCAFFREY : 61 mins (timed)
seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK), 4th November 2006 - with thanks to Brigid McCaffrey

for more information on Lay Down Tracks: mail@lacefactoryfilms.com