The Parking Lot Movie

A parking lot in Charlottesville and a group of attendants who work there. Most are university graduates, some dropped out of doctorates, some are musicians. The job is simple: raise the barrier, take the money, count the cars. But what comes at them through the day is human behaviour. Some argue rather than pay, some smash through the barrier, some do not see the attendants at all. Meghan Eckman's documentary runs seventy-one minutes and its subject is not the parking lot but class. On one side are the cars of college students, on the other the people who count those cars for an hourly wage; the film looks at the distance between the two. The attendants have worked out a kind of philosophy among themselves and the camera takes them seriously. James McNew of the band Yo La Tengo is among them. The film drew unexpected attention where it was first shown.