Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (SOTD) — Sheilah [Wilson] ReStack — Sheilah Restack

"Strangely Ordinary This Devotion is a visceral exploration of feral domesticity, queer desire, and fantasy in a world under the threat of climate change. Utilizing and exploding archetypes, the film offers a radical approach to collaboration and the conception of family." Aily Nash, curator for Whitney Biennial 2017

28 minutes, directed by Dani [Leventhal] Restack and Sheilah [Wilson] Restack, 2017

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The Brooklyn Rail: Phil Coldiron
October 05, 2017 | Toronto
It’s an intensely open film of private ritual and wonder, the only work in these ten days where I felt I had to jury-rig an entire receptive framework on the fly to even begin to account for the work it was doing. It’s stuck with me like a rock in my mouth.
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Cinema Scope: Michael Sicinski
September 28, 2017 | Critic's Rating: 8/10
A domestic mini-epic capacious enough to include witches in the heartland, the painterly use of blood or blood substitutes, Chantal Akerman and Prince, the oral application of smooth stones, gardens and mesas, the draining of a sebaceous cyst, and the enthusiastic eating of pussy. It is very possibly the film of the year.
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Sight & Sound: Jordan Cronk
September 27, 2017 | Toronto
It situates the artists’ own bodies, as well as that of their young daughter, into a beautiful and strikingly carnal essay on domesticity and motherhood that unearths playfully primal impulses from both physiological bounds and prescribed notions of female sexuality.
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MUBI's Notebook: Kelley Dong
September 12, 2017 | Toronto
Window Water Baby Moving (1958) comes to mind, but Wilson and Leventhal do not gawk at pregnancy or sink under the hand of a father figure, instead separating the mother from genitalia, genitalia from gender, gender from tradition, and tradition from form... Though its many abstractions may extend beyond immediate comprehension, Strangely Ordinary This Devotion eschews the belief that clarity is honesty, that honesty must always be clear, and it elicits far more than one exclamation mark. (!!!)

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