"The day I met Asbury Park" - director's statement.

I love documentaries about places that bond people together. In this case it is Asbury Park.

My first Asbury Park experience was too visceral, too sensuous, too overwhelming for me to actually describe it in one short sentence. My family used to vacation in Seaside or Point Pleasant, and then one day we stopped by Asbury Park and it was so unalike. I was instantaneously inspired by beautiful, abandoned and fading architecture, by empty and somber beaches, by lonely drummer sitting at the boardwalk nodding in between his isolated beats but never knew that years later I would come back to make this film.

I feel as if Asbury Park is enough of a place to drive a plot without any scripting. Strong visuals of the beach at different times, new and old buildings, real vintage footage from 1940s and 50s, real life people and natives can tell a better story than a scripted Hollywood blockbuster.

Making a historical documentary about Asbury Park seems like a way-too ambitious project, but I feel strongly that even in ninety minutes or so I want to tell a whole story, and not just make a sketch or mood piece. Choosing the right people to work with is such a big part of making this film. I truly enjoy filming this project and I have my production team to thank for knowing exactly what we’re going for, what we need to do, and how we’re going to tackle it.

When the past is represented through cinema, it becomes a shared memory of the filmmakers, the people interviewed in the documentary, and subsequently the public that will watch this film. Part of the concept for me is to go way over the top, to push everything past 100%, and despite the problems or issues the newly revived resort is still combating, make every frame of this documentary communicate a reckless optimism about the future of Asbury Park, shared by every single person interviewed in this film thus far. So I decided to achieve this by blending my favorite elements of surfing and skateboarding documentary styles where camera is placed on a board and by using fish eye lens (popular in sports) with American newsreel style, integrated with relevant experts’, musicians’, artists’, activists’ sit-down interviews. I hope to create a kind of a unique retro educational pro-environmental type of film. A lot of what outsiders think of the Jersey Shore is the MTV show, fist pumping, spring break, etc. My mission is to show the real “Jersey Shore.” Through this documentary I am interested in exploring the innards of Asbury Park’s social complexity and its ongoing ability to magnetize people like myself. I have an intense desire to hit every key moment of Asbury Park’s history and possibly find explanation to what brought about confrontation of ideologies as they pertain to town’s future endeavors. I hope audiences of this film will gain a respect for change, preservation, the shore and its residents.

For a long time Asbury Park seemed to be an emblem of something that is about to disappear, something that erodes like the once widely grinning Tillie mural, now sitting quietly in developers storage and waiting for its glory days to return, like the old Baronet Theater that will not be resurrected and like the still open North End Beach that may be taken over by luxury apartment complex, blocking the view of a beautiful sunrise. For a long time Asbury Park seemed to have no place in our contemporary landscape. Until now... I couldn't have written this story. It is a story only Asbury Park can tell.

- Bridget Machete

#documentaries #jerseyshore #tillie #baronettheater