On Friday evening, I moderated a panel at the Denver Film Festival called DIY FIlmmaking in an Indie Apocalypse. I pitched the panel to the festival in the hopes that by talking to actual filmmakers who have recently made moderately successful films (mostly) independent of the system that the “sky is falling” fatalism insists is broken, we could start to expand this dialogue beyond doomcasting and push towards options and solutions. I’m not sure we repaired the ever-expanding crack in the firmament in one night, but certainly the six filmmakers who took the stage offered a new perspective on the supposed crisis.
You can listen to a recording of the full panel here, but if you don’t have 73 minutes to spare, after the jump I’ve isolated what I think were five major themes of the evening. Here’s more info on the filmmakers and their films:
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.
Finally, Lillian and Dan comes to CineVegas almost a full year after its first and only significant public screening, as part of the M-word heavy Summer 2007 Independents Week series at Harvard Film Archives. It’s a find, a definite cousin of the work being made in the Bronstein household––as with Frownland, the mumbling here is so stylized and disturbed that it’s like a precision bomb against the twee subtelties explored by other contemporary filmmakers––it’s more like Tourettescore. But there’s also a tenderness here, and lofty aesthetic ambitions underpinned with authentic melancholy. It’s a heartbreaker.
Another day, another line-up for a festival that I’ll be attending in June. This time it’s CineVegas, and in addition to some of the familiar fest circuit favorites (Momma’s Man, Gonzo, Goliath), there are some exciting surprises. The Circuit has the full lineup. Here’s a sampling of what I hope to check out over the course of my three or four days in town:
Two films by Abel Ferrara, including Go-Go Tales (screening in the Diamond Discoveries section for films without distribution––thus squashing last fall’s rampant rumors that IFC had picked the film up around the time of the New York Film Festival?) and the US premiere of Ferrara’s doc about the Hotel Chelsea, Chelsea on the Rocks.
Finally, Lillian and Dan: A no-fi indie which I’ve been looking forward to seeing ever since The Cinetrix described it as “like a Sebadoh cassette stuck in a hatchback’s tape deck.” There’s a hypnotic trailer on MySpace.
Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake: A concert doc, shot on digital video by seven Reno teenagers in the crowd and backstage at the band’s July 4, 2006 show. See a trailer above.
Dark Streets: Starring Bijou Phillips and Gabriel Mann, Variety’s Mike Jones describes it as a “noir musical.” That’s a combination of words to which I can’t say no.
The Cinetrix went to Independents Week at the Harvard Film Archive, and came back raving about the dance scenes in three of the films that screened there. The films were Hannah Takes the Stairs, Quiet City, and a film I had not previously been aware of called Finally, Lillian and Dan, directed by a local filmmaker named Mike Gibisser. Here’s what The Cinetrix had to say:
[In] all three films there are spontaneous, visceral dance sequences that soar. Mike Gibisser’s real-life granny dances rapturously to a Jolie Holland tune; Hannah and roommate Rocco rock out as they work through Hannah’s romantic confusion; and Jamie, Charlie, Robin, and Kyle dreamily groove to an r&b track replaced by the diegetic music of Keegan DeWitt [rights issues]. These inarticulate idealists connect through the physical movement to music in a way that makes the cinetrix’s bricolage-lovin’ heart sing.
The ‘trix goes on to seek suggestions on great “musical moments in non-musicals.” I saw Hannah and Quiet City at SXSW in March, where they formed another non-musical dance scene trio with a film that did not screen at Independent’s Week, Ry Russo-Young’s Orphans. The dance scene in Orphans is a dizzying concoction of love, envy, double entendre, competition, ill-fitting party dresses, resentment and Absolut Citron. It’s not only my favorite of the three scenes, but it’s probably one of my favorite scenes in any American film of this decade.
I find it fascinating that naturalistic dance scenes are becoming as much of a hallmark of these Mumblecore films as improvised dialogue and hand-held video. Within the context of these relatively static narratives, the dances become as spectacular as a climactic car chase or series of explosion in a Hollywood movie.
I also recently watched Macao for the first time, a non-musical which has an amazing scene of Jane Russell singing “One For My Baby.” But that’s not really a dance scene, so I’ll save that discussion for another time.
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.
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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.
