Ryan Lambert

Ryan Lambert is a filmmaker and critic taking inspiration from hyperreality, jagged rhythms, and a voracious diet of books and films. His recent projects were screened at events by Out on Film, Mammal Gallery, Collect Atlanta, and Kodak, and his written work has been featured in NeoText Review, Blood Knife, and elsewhere. After grinding through dozens of bootstrapped projects and DIY screenings since the spring of 2014, tackling themes of mind control, food insecurity, and the military-industrial complex, Ryan's first major public endeavor in the video arts was Head to Head (2019), an absurdist adaptation of a one-act play about queer rights activist Maria Helena Dolan sparring with anti-LGBT icon Anita Bryant. The tone was more solidified, and the aesthetics more refined: this project was accepted into Out on Film, an Oscar-qualifying festival and the second largest in Atlanta since 1987. Ryan made one more professional project before the pandemic closed down the world: What We All Want (2020), a piece exploring technological pessimism and his first shot on 16mm film as part of a showcase put together by Kodak. While locked up at home in May of that year, he wrote, shot, edited, colored, sound mixed, and starred in a short experimental video about the intersection between religion and mass consumerism. It was screened by one of Atlanta's premier independent art spaces, Mammal Gallery. Most recently, Ryan wrote and directed Ain't That a Kick in the Head (2021), a proof-of-concept for a planned feature about a violent rent feud and an informative experience in terms of how to translate visual ideas from text to screen. This year also saw him transition to a larger creative playground and bigger market, moving to New York City. Ryan's time since then has been spent community building by reviewing movies every week in his online publication Cinemargins, which curates worthwhile viewing experiences in a period of constant noise and content overload. He is in development on his first feature-length film.