A founding member of Omnes Films, Carson Lund (b. 1991) has carved a unique place for himself in American independent cinema through his work as a cinematographer on many of the collective’s most notable efforts. Founded in 2011 by Lund and a few college friends in Boston, Omnes experienced a breakthrough in 2019 with Tyler Taormina’s debut feature Ham on Rye, a suburban-set fable shot through with a nostalgic glow that has become Lund’s visual signature. Omnes is now based in Los Angeles, and while the city has influenced its output—most notably the Silverlake-set Topology of Sirens (2021) which Lund lensed for director Jonathan Davies—there is an unmistakable sense of longing to the films attributable, at least in part, to their bicoastal nature.

While attending Emerson College, Lund began writing program notes for the Harvard Film Archive, where he also worked for a period of years as an usher, taking tickets, distributing print calendars and handing out microphones during Q&As. More importantly, it was during this time that the aspiring filmmaker cut his teeth on the Hollywood classics and international art cinema that would later inspire his work as both a critic and cameraman. (In addition to the HFA, Lund regularly contributes film criticism to Slant Magazine.) You can see the influence of these years on the aesthetic of many of the features Lund has shot, including his most recent collaboration with Taormina, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (2024), a multigenerational portrait of a large Italian American family that unfolds like a combination of two very different films from 1982: Barry Levinson’s Diner and Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander.

Eephus, Lund’s directorial debut, was made concurrently with Miller’s Point and shares a number of characteristics with Taormina’s film—namely a preoccupation with bygone traditions and the passing of time. (Both films also premiered in the 2024 Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.) Named for an obscure off-speed pitch, Eephus depicts the final game between two New England recreational league teams before the field is torn down to make way for an elementary school. Lund, who also co-wrote and edited the film, structures the quasi-real time story in two unequal parts as day turns to night and the players reluctantly retire into the darkness. Imbuing America’s pastime with formal and narrative cues taken from Robert Altman, Tsai Ming-liang, and Richard Linklater, Eephus blends artistic and cultural opposites with the finesse and reverence of a young filmmaker with an old soul, one whose time-honored vision belies his adventurous spirit.

Eephus is a sports film unlike any other. Set over the course of a single day, the film centers on two amateur New England baseball teams as they play one final game at their beloved Soldiers Field before it is paved over for an elementary school. Lund’s durational approach to the story, which takes place near where he grew up and is based on his experiences in rec league baseball, means that things play out in a manner resembling the time-based narratives of Richard Linklater or Tsai Ming-liang—the latter of whom the filmmaker cites as an inspiration for both the movie’s elegiac tone and its quietly unfolding structure, which begins early in the day as the teams arrive and settle into the game’s early innings, before descending into darkness as the contest wears on and the players slowly disperse into the night. As in many of the features lensed by Lund under the Omnes Films banner, Eephus bears a distinctly nostalgic air, which both eulogizes a once-beloved American pastime and captures a sense of masculine camaraderie rare in contemporary cinema. Narrated by veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman and dotted with vintage radio ads that waft from analogue boomboxes in each team’s dugout, the film unfolds in the kind of meticulous detail that both a cinephile and sports fan can admire. Indeed, the ensemble cast, comprised of cult figures from both worlds—including former major league pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee and current indie character actors Wayne Diamond and Keith William Richards—only deepens this richly textured film’s simultaneous sense of the bygone and under-appreciated. – Jordan Cronk