WHAT REMAINS

DOCUMENTARY, US, 2005, 80 minutes

Director: Stephen Cantor
Producers: Mandy Stein
Composer/Original Music: Mary Lorson
Mary Lorson in attendance

“It’s been my philosophy to make art out of the everyday and the ordinary,” says the photographer Sally Mann in this wonderfully intelligent and intimate documentary. Steven Cantor follows his award-winning short film about Mann’s controversial photographs of her children with a feature that covers the extended period of Mann’s landscape photos, her death and decay series, and her recent self-portraits. The film shows Mann at work behind the camera and also allows her opportunities to talk at length about her work process and how she arrives at a subject that will sustain her for years. Mann trusts Cantor enough to let him into a domestic life that is inseparable from her work and also to film her despair when Pace/McGill, her New York gallery, rejects her death and decay photos and her elation when that work opens at D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery in the memorable installation from which the film takes its title. (Amy Taubin)

· 2006 Tribeca Film Festival: New York Loves Film Documentary Award

Guitarist, songwriter and producer Billy Coté created the alt-rock band Madder Rose in the early 90’s, with Mary Lorson as lead singer and rhythm guitarist The band released three albums on Atlantic Records for three albums, switching to Cooking Vinyl for a fourth. Madder Rose enjoyed critical acclaim and toured extensively on their own and as support act for some of the most popular artists of that time, headlining the Melody Maker stage at the Reading Festival in 1993. Their songs appeared in popular television shows and films as well.

Since the Madder Rose days, Lorson created the artrock project Mary Lorson and Saint Low in the late-1990's, releasing an eponymous debut in 2000 on the Cooking Vinyl and Thirsty Ear labels. She has been hired as a touring keyboardist and singer for Belly’s Tanya Donelly and Willard Grant Conspiracy, and Jennie Stearns, and can be heard guesting on recordings by Willard Grant Conspiracy, Seafood, the Walkabouts, and others. Saint Low's sophomore effort, Tricks for Dawn, was released on spinART! (US) and Cooking Vinyl (ROW) in May of 2002. The album received enthusiastic press, with Evan Dando as a featured guest. In August of 2005, Lorson was invited to perform at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and her solo performance there is archived on their website. Mary Lorson and Saint Low’s current release, Realistic, reached stores in the February of 2006, on the Cooking Vinyl USA label. The album, which was released in the UK and Europe in 2005, was voted album of the month by German Rolling Stone, and received very enthusiastic press worldwide.

Meanwhile, Coté has released the full length recording Jazz Cannon (released on San Francisco’s Function 8 Records, home of Tommy Guerrero, Jet Black Crayon). He shares production credit with Lorson on the Saint Low cds, and has produced an album by the emerging alt-country outfit Hubcap. With vocalist Uniit Carruyo, Cote released the experimental pop album Glen the Owl in 2005.

Over the years, songs by Lorson and/or Cote have been showcased on numerous films and television shows, including “Mad Love,” “Reunion,” “Alias,” “Felicity,” “The Real World,” “Beautiful People,” “Santa Barbara,” and “Still Life,” “Nordkraft.” They live in Ithaca, New York, with their 4-year-old son.

Mary Lorson and Billy Coté began doing music for films in 2000, and released their instrumental album Piano Creeps, a collection of pieces expanded from film work, in 2003. Among their credits are Grace Lee's "Barrier Device," starring Sandra Oh. They created the original music for “What Remains,” Steven Cantor’s stirring documentary on photographer Sally Mann. Additionally, they have done extensive for-commission film library work. In March of 2006, Mary Lorson and Billy Cote created and performed the accompaniment for the opening program of the Finger Lakes International Film Festival, which featured rarely-screened vintage silent films from all over the world, and will perform at the Corning Museum of Glass in the coming months.