Since the conversation about internet and day-and-date distribution really started to heat up in 2005, the alternatives to theatrical distribution have seemed to only multiply and evolve, while the general perception of public exhibition has remained about the same: filmmakers like it, but in terms of bottom line, it’s only useful as an extended commercial for ancillaries such as DVD. But is that perception changing? Two related quotes of note popped up in the feeds this morning.
God, I love Lloyd Kaufman. The Troma figurehead was frustrated that the Tribeca Film Festival’s takeover of the Village East Cinema prevented the theater from being able to show trailers or post posters for Troma’s Poultrygeist</em> for two weeks before the film was set to open there. So he dressed up like a chicken and protested in front of the theater on the final weekend of the festival. According to the New York Post’s Page Six, Poultrygeist’s opening night at the Village East is now sold out. In the Page Six story, Kaufman complains that the “Tri-beak-a Film Festival” has never screened a Troma film, and there are probably a lot of reasonable reasons for that, but the fact remains that as an extremely corporate event blocking a local, truly independent filmmaker from promoting his upcoming release in the usual ways, they’re sort of asking for it.
BoingBoing points to the theme song and trailer (above) for RetarDEAD, a campy, low-budget 50s paranoia-style horror film, in which former Dead Kennedy Jello Biafra plays the mayor of a town rocked first by a “masturbating terrorizer,” then by garden-variety, special-ed zombies. A sure candidate for the nest “avant-retarde” retrospective, no?
Preston Miller’s Jones offers an outsider’s perspective on contemporary New York rarely seen on film, and almost never acknowledged by natives. As the camera tracks star Trey Albright strolling the streets in real time, through neon-overlit Times Square and streetlamp-orange midtown side streets, Miller transforms some of the most personality-devoid sections of the city into a kind of paradise of anonymity. Times Square may be a sanitized tourist trap to you and me, but in Jones, it’s a blank screen for an actual tourist’s fantasies of liberation.
Opening tomorrow night for a one-week run at the Pioneer Theater in New York, Jones is the kind of lo-fi, no budget, non-traditional narrative that, without the support of a festival like SXSW, has an extremely difficult time making waves. But Miller finds a few ingenious ways around his limitations, and the unprofessional look of the video is actually one of my favorite things about it. It’s shifty and unstable and, particularly in the eerie brightness it captures on real NYC streets, never film-like but often very pretty.
The West Side, a web series by Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman, defies online video stereotypes in virtually every meaningful way. It’s not a quick-and-shoddy, webcam-in-a-dorm-room production; there are real scripts, costumes, score and locations. It’s presented in wide screen, in crisp, meticulously lit and After Effected black-and-white. Plus, it’s a Western, a period piece, and a gangster fantasy. But it’s also a truly independent production, produced with more ingenuity than cash, taking inspiration from existing genres but twisting them to fit its own unique iconography and mythology.
This is likely one of the reasons for the four month gap between the debut of the first episode (which I wrote about here) and the posting, this week, of the second. In the interim, the filmmakers’ blog has become an essential read, not just for details on their tech struggles and triumphs, but as a source for tips and tricks for DIY filmmakers making work specifically for the web.
This is truly a serialized work, so if you haven’t seen Episode One, watch it here before moving on to Episode 2. They’re not embeddable, but that’s okay, because they look really pretty on the plain white page.
Full disclosure: Ryan and I both used to work for this company, but we’ve never met.
I’m not trying to be a full-time Anthology Film Archives promotion factory, but in addition to their aforementioned Minnelli festival, tonight the house that Jonas Mekas built is hosting a NewFilmakers program called NewFilmmakers Goes Frat which looks pretty great.
The program includes two films I’d like to see: Altered by Elvis, described as “a documentary feature about lives permanently affected by Elvis Presley,” and Jones, a feature about a young dad-to-be who visits New York on business and gets caught up in the world of Asian call girls. In a Reeler story posted earlier today, Jones director Preston Miller says Jones, which was made on a budget of “about $2,000″, is a testament to the fact that “to make a feature, you don’t have to have tons of money or even a little bit of money.” Judging by the trailer (embedded above), Miller got quite a bit of mileage out of leading man Trey Albright, who comes off as something like Matthew Perry, but with a personality.
For more info on this and future NewFilmmakers programs, check out their website.
The debate over the New York Mayor’s Office proposal to more strictly regulate public photography has hit a kind of a fever pitch over the last week. A week ago today, a group called Picture NY (which includes filmmaker Jem Cohen) organized a rally in downtown Manhattan that got quite a bit of local news attention. Around the same time, web comedy troupe Olde English released a protest video, done in the style of early-90s soft-rap. The clip seems to be on its way to viral classic status; since I wrote about it here at the beginning of the week, it’s been viewed about 13,000 times on SuperDeluxe, seemingly without any kind of formal promotion from the site. It’s super-broad and hyperbolic, but sadly, I think a case could be made that political media needs to be both in order to disseminate messages to web video audiences.
I think the protest itself is valid, and if you feel the same, you may want to sign this petition before it is submitted to meet the deadline for public comment, which is EOD today. However, like Stu VanAirsdale at The Reeler, I’m a little wary of how all the hoopla surrounding the protest has led to a distortion of what the debate is all about.
We love it when two previously-blogged topics collide. According to Anthony Kaufman, filmmaker Jem Cohen (whose collaboration with Patti Smith I posted about here) sent out an email today asking friends and colleagues to join him in protesting proposed changes to New York City permit regulations for amateur photographers (which I wrote about previously here). As Cohen explains, the proposed changes (which would make permits necessary for any shoot involving more than two people and a hand-held camera that lasted over thirty minutes) would severely limit DIY photography and film/video making in the city:
The fact is that we simply CANNOT predict where, when, and how long we are going to film or photograph; we CANNOT afford expensive liability insurance policies; we occasionally NEED to work with other people or to use tripods to support our gear. (The regulations would, for example, effectively rule out a great deal of time-lapse photography which depends on tripods and cannot possibly be done with time limitations of 10 to 30 minutes, as well as the use of large format still cameras and long lenses).
One of Michael Bloomberg’s greatest successes as mayor has been his promotion of local film and television production. By offering some amazing tax incentives, the Bloomberg administration has re-established NYC as a feasible shooting location for indies. Kaufman says the proposed regulations would tarnish the city’s reputation as a haven for filmmakers pretty significantly. “If the New York Mayor’s Office of Film and TV really cares about New York as a vital indie filmmaking center,” he writes, “They need to stop putting in effect procedures that help Hollywood productions and cripple the low-budget mavens that once made this city the artistic capital of the world.”
If you want to join the protest, click through for the contact info on Anthony’s blog. The Mayor’s office is allegedly accepting feedback on this issue until August 3.
It’s true. A few people in the world don’t have any trouble having fun. They can throw together a party, gather up a bunch of cool people, and generally make memorable things happen. But most of the rest of us could use a few idea-starters, it seems. At Spout we’ve been talking a lot about more ways to get people watching and talking about films together. Some of our ideas revolve around DIY-type party planners for different types of film-watching experiences–some crazy and fun-driven, others more contemplative and conversation-driven.
Anyway, I got kind of excited about this Battlestar Galactica party planner idea when I ran across it yesterday on Boing Boing. Zack Exley, the online activism strategist from the political organization MoveOn, has had plenty of success with his politically-driven house party concept. Now Exley and others have applied the idea to fan parties for Battlestar Galactica. Not exactly my cup o’ tea, but pretty cool nonetheless. The site helps you organize a party if you want to host, or you can find a party that’s being hosted in your area if you’re looking to hang out with other fans during the season opener. How cool would that be for films? (Especially if you’re into a somewhat obscure director or genre.)
The idea of many people doing the same thing on the same night in dozens of homes across the nation is pretty exciting, too. After all, those of us who love the same things are connected–we’re a part of one big community that’s usually just inhibited by geography.
So here’s my question: What do you think would be the best first Spout film-party planner concept, if we were to do such a thing? What would the theme be, or the featured film?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
Since the conversation about internet and day-and-date distribution really started to heat up in 2005, the alternatives to theatrical distribution have seemed to only multiply and evolve, while the general perception of public exhibition has remained about the same: filmmakers like it, but in terms of bottom line, it’s only useful as an extended commercial for ancillaries such as DVD. But is that perception changing? Two related quotes of note popped up in the feeds this morning.
We love it when two previously-blogged topics collide. According to 
