Independent cinema is a bigger growth industry than you might think. A decade ago, there were maybe a hundred film festivals worldwide showcasing foreign films, documentaries, and low-budget fare. Now that number’s about a thousand. Here in Minnesota, the reigning king is the U Film Society’s international festival, one of the largest yearly draws of any arts event in the state. But there’s apparently plenty of room for growth here, too. Two of the newest film fests, Sound Unseen and Central Standard, screen this month, and they ought to be on the radar of any self-respecting fan of indie cinema.
Central Standard, after a modest start last year, has an ambitious slate of thirty-plus feature-length films and dozens of shorts. The focus here is regional: Nearly all the films were shot somewhere other than New York or L.A., including eight Minnesota-made features. The festival opens with the excellent, quirky cop drama Evenhand and a performance by ex-Soul Coughing singer Mike Doughty, who wrote Evenhand’s soundtrack. Other good prospects include local writer/director Patrick Coyle’s moody Detective Fiction, and Speedo, a documentary about demolition-derby king Ed Jager, whose life is as beat-down as one of his post-race cars.
Sound Unseen, now in its fourth year, focuses on movies about music, gathering a wealth of documentaries, concert films, and video collections. Highlights this year include a biography of recording engineer Tom Dowd, who went from the Manhattan Project to become Atlantic Records’ secret weapon; You See Me Laughin’, which profiles gutbucket bluesmen R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, maybe the last authentic Delta blues musicians around; Let Me Be Your Band, about the wacky world of one-man bands; and the long-lost uncut version of Sun Ra’s 1974 sci-fi musical Space Is the Place, a true time capsule of free-jazz fabulousness.
Both festivals are local eruptions of a larger national uprising in independent film. In recent years, festival-circuit giants like Sundance and Cannes have been reduced to a business-driven need to find the next big Hollywood breakout hit. The high-profile festivals, once proudly independent, have become Hollywood’s happy hunting ground, and festival organizers have responded in the most pimp-like fashion: They draw movie-hungry studios and their cash by requiring exclusive premiere rights to the movies they screen. In exchange, of course, indies get their best shot at discovery by the majors. To be sure, the effect on America’s film culture at large is probably positive—this is where movies like Memento, Reservoir Dogs, and Usual Suspects first got noticed and pushed toward a wider public.
The problem is that the odds of any particular movie getting picked up are at least as grim as a minor-league ballplayer’s chance of getting drafted by the Yankees. And the system favors potential blockbusters, so documentaries and offbeat features tend to get shafted. There are only so many slots, and reel after reel of worthy work simply gets lost somewhere between one cocktail party and another. And so the only apparent path to success for hopeful directors was one that strikes an outside observer as insane: Submit your movie to only one festival, and then never show it again anywhere else, even after the premiere, lest the all-important buzz wear off and scare away prospective distributors. “They want the buzz to themselves,” says Sound Unseen programmer Peter Lucas. “But that’s if they pick these films up. Too many filmmakers were doing this and then the films were never seen or heard from again.” Sundance or die.
But there was clearly a niche for the films left behind by the gold rush. What happened was the film world’s version of a fringe festival: the growth of a whole bunch of upstart film events across the country, at places like Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center and San Francisco’s Other Minds. Their primary interest is connecting with local audiences, not with Hollywood dealmakers. Since they’re not obsessed with nabbing national premieres, it also means more sharing between fest-runners in different cities. “If we see something great, we don’t necessarily hoard it,” says Lucas. “We call other programmers and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to show this.’” This has the pleasant effect of creating an ad hoc distribution network, helping solve one of the chief headaches for independent filmmakers. As they ought to have been all along, film festivals become an audience-reaching end in themselves.
“I think it’s become unhealthy for the independents to hold out for Sundance,” agrees Central Standard’s programmer, Todd Hansen. Technical advances and the rise of DVD distribution make the economics of low-budget filmmaking actually work in favor of artists for a change. These days, small filmmakers can turn out high-quality product on an incredibly low budget. Shooting and editing on digital video can be cheaper than buying a used car, and going direct-to-DVD is a genuine alternative to spending five million dollars to break out an indie film via the L.A. pipeline of celluloid. It may not be very high profile, but the alternative before was total obscurity. “No one’s going to have a house in Malibu,” notes Hansen, but a frugal, marketing-savvy filmmaker can build an honest-to-gosh career without ever being noticed by the majors. For instance, Vermont filmmaker John O’Brien, whose comedy Nosey Parker is playing at Central Standard, has made not just one but three films while maintaining another career—as a sheep farmer. (Now there’s a day job that beats waiting tables.)
But to take best advantage of this unheard-of concept of DIY moviemaking, you’ve got to get some screen time in regional theaters, and Hansen hopes that Central Standard will eventually function as a portal for locally made movies to get bookings in out-state towns like Sauk Centre. He’s also taking his case to the airwaves starting October 6, when he’ll host Channel 45’s new indie-film showcase, FilmFinds.
Of course, especially in the present economy, finding sources of funding for nonprofits is no easy job. The audience for indie fare seems to be growing everywhere, but can it be enough to support these proliferating festivals and ensure their survival? “They’re all still happening, so I think that question sort of answers itself,” says Hansen. “There’s a flawed distribution system right now, and there’s a craving for material that’s not reaching people through the heavy overhead and high expense of Hollywood. There’s a huge missed market out there. And Minneapolis is incredible for having supported Iranian-subtitled films for twenty-one years. Not many people have that. It’s a great testament to this town and the savvy of its filmgoers.”
For more information:
Central Standard Film Festival, Sept. 17-21; (612) 338-0871.
Sound Unseen Film Festival, Sept. 26-Oct. 2; (612) 333-4995.
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