Patrick McGuinn

To experience any of filmmaker Patrick McGuinn’s work is something akin to traveling back to a childhood you didn’t actually experience … a mixture of innocence and depravity, the strangely familiar and the unknown. With influences as far-flung as B-movies, children’s television, and queer-indie flicks, McGuinn (son of Roger McGuinn, founding member of legendary rock-band, The Byrds) seems obsessed with the magic and madness hiding in seemingly mundane settings. Love or hate his work, the impression you’re left with is an indelible one. L.A.-born McGuinn began by shooting with a Super 8 camera as a child, amassing a body of short films. At age eleven, he won first place in a statewide film competition with “Evolution,” a claymation comedy about the food chain. “After years of making Super 8 films as a youth, I yearned to expand into 16mm filmmaking,” explains the director, “And after a year of working for a small production company in Nashville, Tennessee, I applied to New York University’s Film School as an undergraduate, and got accepted.”