The STRANGE REBIRTH of ANDRE WEIL
 A boy meets girl... Boy gets shot in the head... Boy turns to God short film.  Inspired by a true story.


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• Shot on black and white, Super 16mm film The Strange Rebirth of Andre Weil is a blackly comic love story that explores themes concerning the fragility of human consciousness and spirituality. Using archival footage and a deadpan narration, The Strange Rebirth of Andre Weil loosely reconstructs the historic neurological case of Phineas Gage, who in the mid-1800s survived a freak accident in which a 13 foot metal rod shot through the frontal lobe of his brain and skull. The film also weaves in an homage to Dr. Michael Persinger, the neuroscientist, and his famous God Helmet.  The MFA thesis project (San Francisco State University) of writer/director Joel Garber.

• From Jeffrey Anderson's Combustible Celluloid review: "Joel Garber's beautiful, funny and daring new short film has wonderful things to say about the indefinable capacity of humans… Garber's film has a very warm, deadpan-giggly, organic tone during the first scenes, and then a wild-eyed paranoia (with a sci-fi touch) during the latter scenes, and inasmuch -- in just 17 minutes -- it brushes up against one of the mysteries of life: Just what is spirituality and what makes it different from our other, more daily emotions, like love?"