Lovely film on death and baseball-preoccupied "stuffmaker" Mac Premo

Describing himself as a ‘stuffmaker’, Mac Premo is a Washington DC-born, trilby-sporting collagist, animator, commercial director and carpenter. For a man with a name that sounds a bit like a burger chain ice-cream sundae, he’s really not done too badly. His fascinating, genre-spanning practice and semblance as an all-round good guy has now been brought to life in a charming film by Bas Berkhout, which is so beautifully shot that every frame could stand alone as a documentary snap of Mac’s life.

Mixing footage of Mac at work, his often Heath Robinson-esque assemblages and his family life, the film manages to be a touching yet unsaccharine look at his ideas (“concept is king”), and his fascination with death. “The only thing we all know is that we’re going to die. Every single one of us will die. But in the meantime we like baseball and steak, we like wine and our daughters,” he sighs. “Somehow we walk through life intellectually knowing of the vastness and uselessness of our existence, and on a micro scale really giving a shit about time small things. That tension is the overreaching one.”