In the pine forests and swamps of East Texas, Life Beyond the Pine Curtain explores a hidden America, far from stereotypes. The film follows four lives on the margins and, with the words of Joe R. Lansdale, builds an intimate and original portrait of the American province.
There are places in America visited only by the sky, dismissed innocuously by distracted passengers as zenithal landscapes not particularly noteworthy. East Texas is one of them. So far from the Texan imagination, it is a flat land crossed by the Sabine River and covered with dense pine forests and vast swamps. Here everything seems to hide and disappear.
Life Beyond the Pine Curtain attempts to cross that invisible border and creep into the folds of America where, out of sight, communities germinate. The film retreats into the lives of four characters and through samplings in their daily lives and the words of Joe R. Lansdale- who comes from these places - it attempts to read the deep reasons behind a complex reality and to render an unprecedented portrait of contemporary America.