Youssou N’dour: I Bring What I Love was shown at SXSW in a 35mm print. Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi announced she’d brought it with her having last shown it in Burkina Faso three weeks ago, and it showed the wear-and-tear of having only one print to go around for a year: it was scratchy during the reel changes. But it was worth it: the doc had slow-burning visual texture and a sense of contextual place I don’t really look for in documentaries anymore. I expect this to be the last time in my life I see a documentary screened in a print at a festival, and it was a good note to go out on. As the story of a controversy, N’Dour takes its time: the first half gives you Senegalese musician superstar N’Dour’s normal routine, the second the fracas around his 2004 album Egypt. Vasarhelyi’s obviously a fan, and she has enough concert footage to show why she was drawn to N’Dour before the drama started, but N’Dour morphs into one of the more nuanced documentaries on modern Islam around.

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Documentaries about musicians gravitate towards dysfunction, because that’s how you get drama into documentaries and most musicians — especially in bands, where too much time spent together yields unnatural tensions — seem to be pretty dramatic anyway. So it’s curious that both Anvil!: The Story Of Anvil and Iron Maiden: Flight 666 played at SXSW, because they’re about as diametrically opposed as movies about metal bands that’ve lasted over 30 years could be. They’re both love letters, but one has to convince the audience to care; the other is pre-sold.

As for which is better, that’d be Anvil. This is made out of love as much as any sense of “what a story”; the last shot (a post-credits photo of director Sacha Gervasi as 1985’s best-coiffed teen metalhead with his then-favorite band) confirms that it’s a gift from a former teen fan, when music matters most. In the early ’80s Anvil was on track to join Metallica and Anthrax in the upper echelons of commercial success; their hit “Metal on Metal” led to them playing alongside Bon Jovi in 1984 in Japan. But something stopped them, and though Slash, Lemmy, Scott Ian and Lars Ulrich all turn up at the start to testify to Anvil’s lasting importance to metal, none of them have any clue what happened to them or why.

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It’s no coincidence that SXSW’s Film and Interactive conferences take place simultaneously, before the hefty barrage of musicians rock and roll into town for the second half of the festival. With Internet-based tools no longer merely an option for all filmmakers to get a handle on but a requirement, the usual discourse on industry issues like distribution and marketing belong squarely within the progressive region of the interactive conference. Even certain Film conference panels not directly advertised as taking the film/interactive crossover approach still had to address a number of questions about the evolution of the industry in the face of new media paradigms. Here’s a snapshot look at some of the more potent themes that emerged at the Austin Convention Center last week. At least, these are the ones that stood out on my notepad; feel free to share yours in the comments section below.

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In the corner by the entrance of the Film/Interactive Conference show floor at SXSW, there’s a glass cube containing a Charlie Rose-esque set (big, round table, black backdrop) and two TV cameras. Here, journalist/blogger/hack-type guests of the festival are invited to interview filmmaker/artist/talent-type guests of the festival, live to tape for later dissemination on the web. This is called StudioSX.

This year at SXSW, I went to see Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax at the Paramount, and ran out of the theater just as the Q & A was starting because I had been scheduled to conduct a StudioSX interview with a filmmaker less than an hour later. But then I got a call from a StudioSX producer, saying the filmmaker I had been scheduled to speak to had missed his flight to Austin and wasn’t going to be able to make it. What films had I seen? he asked. Who would I like to interview instead. I immediately blurted out, “Beeswax! Andrew Bujalski!” — not just because the film was fresh in my head, but also because it was the rare movie that left me with actual questions, that defied my smug, know-it-all tendency to have its mysteries completely worked out by the line I had to lineup for the next screening.

Long story … uh .. still probably longer than it needs to be, the StudioSX people called Bujalski’s people, and within an hour he was rushed off stage at the Paramount and was sitting across from me in Charlie Rose Bizarroworld. We talked for 10 minutes, about scripting for an unscripted feel, about why a film called Beeswax has nothing literally to do with bees, and about his slowly evolving relationship to celluloid. It was taped, and you can now watch it here.

Peter Gibson is a modest guy in Montreal who didn’t think of himself as an artist when he started spray-painting stencils on the street; he just had inchoate notions about public space and was fueled by a post-9/11 desire to enter what seemed like a new era of discussion — about, seemingly, everything, but never mind; now seemed like the time to get serious. So he took his cardboard stencils out at night, laid them down on the road and spray-painted mischievous additions to Montreal’s roads: turning cross-walks into gigantic shoe-prints or adding zippers to them, even a mysterious “On” button with no obvious function. Non sequiturs were his mode of choice, explicit verbal statements pretty much not on the table. Then he got arrested and was forced to think, seriously, about whether or not he was an artist or just a guy with a weird compulsion.

At any rate, that’s how Alan Kohl’s zippy documentary Roadsworth: Crossing The Line approaches Gibson; it’s one of the most modest artist profiles I’ve seen, and precisely modesty makes it exciting. Gibson doesn’t have a manifesto; he’s against cars, but he’s not sure what he has to add to that conversation. He allows that maybe his work is “raising questions,” but qualifies with “I guess.” He doesn’t think of his stencils as significant: “This is closer to cartoons than it is to high art,” he offers. (Cue the sputtering of 1,000 outraged comix nerds.) He’s not going to tackle heady theoretical questions, because he doesn’t feel intellectually qualified: “I’ve never read Heidegger or, uh, Kant.” This makes Gibson the perfect artist for that genre of SXSW movies we can’t label anymore: bright and funny, but self-consciously hedging around what he’s doing. (As it happens, it sold out its first screening in the underattended, underpromoted SXGlobal section — shunted off to the 70-seat-capacity Hideout — and got an additional screening. So a hit of sorts. SXSW should do much more to promote this slate, which had uniformly stronger selections than any of the other ones I hit up.)

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In a way, this all started back in high school, in an art classroom, painters-turned-filmmakers Andy Duensing and Chris Doyle meeting there. Better known now as the pair behind the collective the Deagol Bros., Andy and Chris, working with longtime friends and fellow artist-musicians Eric and Jordan Lehning, have spent from production to final cut the last five years of their lives making the at turns poignant and goofball, genre-defying coming-of-age indie Make-Out with Violence.

As chronicled in journalist Jim Ridley’s feature story for Nashville Scene, the production was beset early by stumbling blocks. Budget limit halts of production, wear and tear on the seams of friendship and at least one very ill-timed break-up roughed up the filmmaking journey. Yet despite these trials, the high school friends, not knowing if they’d ever have another opportunity to make a feature, sought to tell the most distinct and interesting story possible.

Pulling from memories of growing up in a much more rural Hendersonville, TN than exists now, Andy, Chris and Eric, all working from separate cities, began a script crafting process that would, in its final stages, blend styles of many seeming opposites. One part comedy, one part drama, another mystery and the last (very small part in the scope of it all) horror, Make-Out with Violence tells the story of teenage twin brothers Patrick (Eric Lehning) and Carol (Cody DeVos), who after the disappearance and death of their friend Wendy (Shellie Shartzer), diverge in their paths toward after high school futures. While the somewhat obsessive Patrick tends to Wendy’s barely animated (read: zombie) corpse, Carol chases, much of the time ineptly, his elusive, tender sweetheart Addie (Leah High.) Told through the eyes of the brothers’ younger sibling Beetle (Brett Miller), the story unfolds with a necessary level of detachment into its punchy and disconcerting yet graceful, moving conclusion.

With its deftly-handled blends of style and score, Make-Out with Violence is at its best as an experiment; it’s both familiar and unexpected, nonchalant and thought-provoking, slapstick comic and full of all that’s yearning and desolate. As such the film in its festival run so far has had both its fervent champions and its quieter skeptics, those who really appreciate its many layers and those who stand in some confusion as to what is ultimately being said here. It’s undeniable, though, that whichever side holds greater sway for the individual filmgoer, Make-Out with Violence leaves a person wondering deeply, and just a little happier afterward for having seen this mix of ideas, images and songs. As Andy puts it, “There’s a certain amount of room there for the viewer to experience the movie in whatever way they want.”

Talking here in phone conference, Andy, Chris, Eric and Jordan share stories about the film’s development, particularly the crafting of its memorable original soundtrack — the disc length of which is longer than the film itself, “by quite a bit” says Jordan, who worked alongside Eric to compose all of the tunes. In the background of our conversation, Kevin Doyle, one of the film’s directors of photography, folds origami DVD sleeves for screener copies of the film. He does this for a full hour while the four others of the film’s creative core talk.

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Being a humorless young man, I’m driven crazy by people who actively seek out bad movies for fun; it seems like that’s a way of avoiding engaging with good art, where the correct response isn’t always obvious. So I was nervous about Best Worst Movie, whose title tells it all. Voted worst film of all time by the normally-none-too-discriminating IMDB users, Troll 2 (Scott Tobias has written about its appeal and cult for his New Cult Canon project) has a bizarre story about people being turned into plants that makes no sense literally or metaphorically, godawful acting and general freefloating incompetence. People love it very much.

I get the appeal — it’s sui generis weirdness that never lets up — but sometimes it bothers me that people indulge in the easy pleasure of celebrating something plainly risible. And yet filmmaker Michael Stephenson makes a case not just for the movie’s appeal, but also the downside of cult filmdom. Best Worst Movie is itself an obvious crowdpleaser that’ll probably find a decent-sized audience, but — fun though it is, and even though the stakes are pretty low, and no dramatic events unfold — it’s actually kind of a downbeat film overall. Stephenson isn’t just a documentarian; he was Troll 2’s child actor. By making this movie, he delves into the appeal of something he’s part of, yet was in no way responsible for the enduring afterlife of.

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It’s heartening that 45365 won Best Documentary at SXSW; Severe Clear is ultimately stronger, but 45365 is the only doc I saw that took any formal risks. The first five minutes made me think I was looking at the doc of the year, let alone the fest.

First the opening shot, repeated several times, a stream of text and colors passing by illegibly fast. (I finally figured out it was an extreme close-up of a train passing by on the third go-round.) Then we’re in an empty theater with a man playing trumpet for no one, which is downright Lynchian. What comes next is showy but dazzling: using the local radio station as an audio link, we go from the station’s extremely efficient DJ to a cop driving along listening, cuting out of the car to zoom into the valley below where the high school football team is practicing as they’re being discussed on the radio, cuts back to the station, cuts to the fair that’s now being discussed, etc. ad infinitum.

Safe to say there’s a lot of formal control here; for their feature doc debut, Bill and Turner Ross appear to have never put themselves in a situation where they couldn’t figure out the most elegant shot in about five seconds flat (although they’re mostly skeptical of and avoid the outright lyrical). And yet, throughout this aesthetically admirable movie, I couldn’t figure out the thematic point; I kept waiting for something revelatory, something that would get me inside either the people on display or the town’s vibe. Instead, all I can tell you is that Sidney, OH (45365) is a nice, small Midwestern town, where everything that stereotypically implies — and nothing more — is firmly set in place.

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Looking up at her co-star Souleymane Sy Savane and noting the pain written on his face, child actress Diana Franco Galindo pulled aside Goodbye Solo director Ramin Bahrani to ask why it was that his character at this moment seemed so sad.

“I don’t know; why do you think he is so sad?” Bahrani asked.

Not having read any of the script beyond her own scenes, Galindo thought for a second on the question.

Here, of course, is all the story background that she, in considering the question, knew nothing of: With this latest work, Bahrani studies the world of naturally jovial, curious taxi driver Solo who, in meeting cantankerous, suicidal fare William (Red West), is forced to reconsider the definitions of friendship. Opening with an already quarrelsome scene between the two men, Goodbye, Solo, while quite a comfortable film to engage with, its journey full of levity as Solo studies for an exam to land a job as a flight attendant, leaves no easy way out either for its characters nor its audience. William has full intentions of leaving everything in life behind him, and Solo, despite his growing affection for the man, must learn not only to let him go but also to help him on his way.

Knowing this perhaps makes Galindo’s answer to Bahrani in that moment all this much more poignant.

“I think because he failed his exam,” she says.

“That’s a really good answer. Why don’t you really encourage him to pass it then!” Bahrani told her.

”And she said she would, and thus she really fills Solo with courage and hope in the final scene to pass, and manages to cheer him up and put a smile on his face about the future, right when another man’s future has been cut and Solo is thinking about the past, mortality, fragility and the briefness of life,” Bahrani explains.

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The SXSW Film Festival is over. We didn’t make it to Austin this year, but we still had a festival experience in our very own home (Paul’s mom’s home, actually), thanks the IFC’s Festival Direct. While Joe Swanberg’s latest offering, Alexander the Last, was premeiring in Austin, we were watching it in a Michigan living room. We discuss how setting influences viewing, and the merits of the film.

We also discuss two other SXSW Festival Direct titles, Zift and Three Blind Mice.

Be sure to e-mail your most awkward movie watching moments involving sex scenes and your parents, to filmcouch [at] spout [dot] com.

0:00 - Intro

1:51 - Listener feedback

11:16 - Alexander the Last

30:39 - Zift, Three Blind Mice

filmcouch-113

Here’s what I would like to learn from a movie about film critics: What makes them pertinent to the needs of society? Has the self-empowering progress of the blogosphere endangered the future of the profession? Most importantly, what kind of a fascinating loon do you have to be to watch movies all the time?

You will find answers to none of these provocative questions in Gerald Peary’s For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, a light, impact-free survey of talking heads that adds absolutely nothing new to the general perception of the practice. Those viewers whose interest in watching critics talk about themselves parallels the curiosity behind, say, wanting to see an Asian elephant at the zoo won’t find themselves disappointed. (I can see it now: “Oh, so that’s what an A.O. Scott looks like…”) Everyone else may find the content lacking a much-needed edge.

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Sweethearts Of The Prison Rodeo is precisely the kind of documentary SXSW must stop showing. In the dark, pre-mumblecore days, when the festival’s mission was pretty amorphous, SXSW premiered Spellbound. Maybe the most financially successful film ever to launch at SXSW, it came with a dark price: any number of soul-sucking, would-be uplifting documentaries in the “quirky,” “humanist” vein. These pre-fab triumphs of the human spirit find hope and humor in the unlikeliest places, hitting the same tedious narrative beats as the Hollywood narratives they’re theoretically the alternative to, showing that the expected emotions of everyday human life soldier on pretty much everywhere. This is surprising, I guess.

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Both a huge party and something of a petri dish of American independent creativity, SXSW is steadily becoming an invaluable stop on the festival circuit. The Austin festival is also the forerunner of a whole slew of American festivals that are proud to be far from New York and LA, and more importantly, far from Park City. So it’s no surprise that the festival would break even more ground in the decentralization of the independent film experience. This year, SXSW and IFC have teamed to offer five films on-demand via IFC Festival Direct, allowing viewers at home to see festival premieres on the same day the play for Austin audiences.

For a midwesterner such as myself, this is tremendously good news. The elephant in the room when talking about any artwork is always access. Who is it for, and who can actually see it? For many, entering the current discussion surrounding independent film is simply an economic impossibility. SXSW is very friendly toward the average-Joe or Jane attendee, especially compared to many other festivals, but a plane ticket and a pass are still a serious expense. It would be easy for the festival organizers to pay lip service to the idea of creating an event for more than just the elite, and then do nothing about it. Instead, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for actively attempting to engage people who want to attend the festival, but can’t.

That said, the “festival at home” experience is far from flawless. Despite the fact that I’m pretty close to the ideal candidate for this type of thing, I don’t have the right kind of cable package required to see on-demand movies. I’ve often considered anteing up for better cable just for IFC, but for the most part a high-speed internet connection and Netflix subscription keep me occupied, and they are a big enough chunk of my monthly budget. So while audiences can technically watch these festival films anywhere, there’s still a large barrier to access, and it still comes down to cost. So I spent the weekend calling up friends, interviewing them about what kind of cable they have, then sheepishly asking if I could invite myself over to watch a few movies. Luckily, I have gracious friends.

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I’ve hung out with enough graphic design nerds to know how tedious their fetish can be to the unconverted, and the options for a documentary about rock posters seemed to be either that kind of geekery or hipster hagiography. “Culture is that thing you shovel out of your window in the evening,” interviewee Mike King wisely announces in Died Young, Stayed Pretty; “otherwise, it will drown you.” The danger in such a project is obviously that kind of self-valorizing mythology, when your clique’s self-evident importance is inaccessible (or just stupid-looking) to outsiders. But Eileen Yaghoobian’s documentary is unexpectedly excellent, a bracingly free-form group portrait of people who only recently discovered each other’s existence when the founding of GigPosters.com showed isolated artists they weren’t just working alone in the dark. I’ll have to take Yaghoobian’s word for it that eminently quotable interviewees like Art Charney and Tom Hazelmyer are actually luminaries of the poster world, but this is one entertaining film regardless of how its profiled community receives it .

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