Email:
kotakpos@yahoo.com
 

... However, as various concepts of "independent film" are heralded in the mainstream media, it's hard not to criticize this media - as well as Filmmaker - for promoting a particular understanding of indpendent filmmaking and for propagating certain American myths.

... As Bill Horrigan, media arts curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts, observes, there are at least two notions of indie film: "According to one definition, an independent film would be a film that might show at Sundance. And according to a different understanding, an independent film would be one whose concerns. methods, and mode of address would render it deeply unpresentable in that context."

Horrigan is referencing the historical roots of a particular strand of independent film pratice, one rooted in the New American Cinema, which spans the mid-'40s through the early '70s, and is peopled by such figures as Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, kenneth Anger, and Andy Warhol.
For these filmmakers "independent" stood for a rigorous opposition to dominant media praticed on several fronts:
- the technological (amateur 16mm and 8mm versus professional 35mm formats)
- the institutional (interpersonal and communal versus corporate and mass modes of production, distribution, and exhibition)
- the aesthetic (the emergent, original, and avant garde versus the residual, conventional, and generic)
- the economic (a love of ilm versus a love of money) and
- the political (an exploration of subcultures, the margins, and the disenfranchised versus the mainstream, the center, and the dominant).

Although hardly a school in the formal sense, what unified the New American Cinema was a visionary commitment to alternative points of view, democratic representation, and counter-cultural transformation - rather than merely contractual commitments to repaying private investors. ...
 

How to Start Your Own Film Festival : A 12-Step Program Brian Flemming on the creation of Slumdance '97

Having trouble getting your film into the major fests, esppecially that really important one in Park City? Can't get your calls returned as you try to form the all-important "political" relationship with a festival programmer? Have you tried pressing every slightly connected person you know to put in a good word? Have you followed up with additional materials, personal notes, flirting and cash bribes, all to no effect?

Don't ever bother with all of that. Really, the best thing you do is to start your own festival. Your film will get seen, you'll make a lot of new friends (and enemies), and reporters and acquisitions execs will be calling you instead of you calling them. The start-up vanity festival, besides being the art form of new film making generation, actually works. Every filmmaker should have at least one.

Here are 12 easy steps to your own festival drawn from my experience with slumdance.

Step 1: Come  Up With A Catchy Name
In the first week of December 1996, actor Keythe Farley, who appears in a feature film I write and directed, Hang Your Dog in the Wind, was in a funk about us not getting into the Sundance Film Festival. Angry and a bit depressed, Keythe struck upon a notion:" Why don't we just re-title the film 'Sundance Festival Winner '? That way they'd have to call it that on theater marquees. "

I told Keythe this was a brilliant idea, but it would likely be prohibitively troublesome to use the word "Sundance." Perhaps a name close to that, though, to create the illusion of "Sundance" would be a good idea. We immediately started calling out derogatory sound-alike names for "Sundance." After we free-associated through some predictable and obscene ones, Keythe chimed in with "Slumdance." The room got very quite. That word was like a virus.  We looked at each other, forming the same, new, absurd idea in our minds. That moment, for better or worse, was the birth of Slumdance. We had the name, the rest would come.

Step 2: Go To Park City
A few days later, Stan Nakazono and George Kelly (respectively, the producer and assistant director of Hang Your Dog in the Wind) were roped into the scam. On Friday, December 13, we arrived in Park City for two-day location scout. One of our first stops was the Chamber of Commerce. A kind of woman in charge there heard what we had planned and immediately said, "No. You can't do it."

She listed many reason why we shouldn't come back to Park City: The Chamber and the rest of the city government consider Robert Redford to be a "god"; the Police Chief would never grant us a Master Festival Permit, and without one we couldn't call ourselves a "film festival"; the Sundance Film Festival would consider us a hostile presence - and we wouldn't want that, would we?

But she could sense that we weren't about to stay home. She advised us that if we did give it a shot, at least we should stay away from Main Street.

Step 3: Head Straight To Main Street
We headed straight to Main Street. Stann, George and I walked up and down both sides of the street asking everyone we saw if they knew of any property that would be available during Sundance for "private screenings." Fortunately, almost everyone who lives in Park City is a real -estate agent, and we got many leads.

Most rooms we viewed were just 2,500-square-foot white boxes of empty office space - not exactly the environment we were looking for to stage our event. Who wants to party in a cramped little box except the people who go to Sundance parties?

On the second day, however, just two hours before our plane was to leave, we finally found the perfect Main Street location: a basement that long ago was a Mrs. Fields cookie factory. We walked around the 6,000-square-foot space in amazement. It was dingy and ugly, with rooting ceiling tiles, a water stained floor and the look of, well, an abandoned factory.  It had hallways that led nowhere, so many rooms that you could get lost at first, and it came with a desperately price lease of  $1,700  - by far the lowest amount we'd yet been quoted. And, to boot, it was directly across the street from Slamdance, and just a few doors up from Egyptian Theater, the heart of Sundance. We took it.

Step 4: Create A Web Site
The good news about creating a web site is that it's cheap and easy. And there is no bad news. For www.slumdance.com, I spent $100 to register the domain name , $75 to get the first 30 days of service and $25 to buy a CD-ROM of cheesy line art. I downloaded a free beta version of Claris Home Page (www.claris.com ) and went to work.

As everyone else enjoyed the holidays, I stayed up at nights turning my anger and bitterness at the commercialism of the indie scene into something resembling satire. The web is fine vehicle for satire-click, laugh, click, laugh, click,-and before you know it, people are enjoying your rants about Sundance and Miramax, and you have about a thousand new friends who are also filled with anger and bitterness. (Oh yeah, it helps if the indie WIRE, the associated Press of the independent film community, announces your website's  debut to their 3,500 subscribers.)

Step 5: Become The Enemy
The website debute was the official announcement of slumdance, and it occurred on January 8 - just ten days before the Slumdance Experience (named in cowardly compliance with Park City's moratorium on the word "festival") was to start. Programming Vagrant Douglas Glazer and the rest of us knew that we couldn't manage to slog through many hundreds submissions in that time. One very bad idea we had originally was just to accept everything, without even looking at it, but after the hangover wore off we realize that sweet but insane plan wasn't going to curry favor with audience.

So I designed the entry form on the website to be an audition. You had to believe in your work to geo into the Slumdance, and we could judge your entry form by its creativity to determine if we would even look at your film. It was a snotty thing to do, but reality demanded it. We e-mailed the senders of the most entertaining forms (you can see samples on www.slumdance.com) asking them to FedEx their tape to us. 

Dough and the rest of the Vagrants look at about 200 films and selected 30 for inclusion in Slumdance. The sole criterion for a film: It had to turn us on. The main thing to remember: avoid thinking,"Who am I to judge other artist work?" It'll only slow you down.

Step 6: Ethics Are For The Privileged
One of the innovations we had our hearts set on the Slumdance was the "Built Your Own Festival" Experience. We dreamed of setting up a Tent City, where a guest could select from a number of movies and get a private screening immediately on one of a number of monitors.

The problem: We need many monitors an VCRs, preferably a good quality. The solution: the 30-day Free Rental Program at the Good Guys electronics store in Salt Lake City. Under this unique plan (which the Good Guys call a no-question-asked "guarantee" ) , you can get monitors and VCRs for free,  as long as you "purchase" them and then take them back within 30 days for a full refund. In addition to monitors and VCRs, Slumdance also rented a ninety digital camera, which made it easy to put pictures on website every day.

Step 7: Find Your Audience
When you start your own festival, one development might surprise you: too many people. Before Slumdance's first day, we were naturally concerned that nobody would show up, but then we were surprised when the lobby became packed with impatience guests on opening night. And the, well, nature of some of the guests confused us. What was the furcoat-and-cellphone crowd doing at Slumdance?

We knew we had to do some weeding. So far our opening ceremony, Keythe and I engaged in that time honored Hollywood tradition: ass kissing. Except Keythe and I actually dropped our pants and literally kissing each other asses. That stunt cleared out half the people in the room. Those who stayed were our kind of people: guests who either appreciated theatrical satire or just enjoyed watching adult kissing each other's bare asses.

Step 8: "Can You Say Starfucking?"
The last issue of filmmaker thoughtfully probed the issue of whether it helps to seek stars for your low-budget  debut feature. Don't worry about puzzling this out when you start your own film festival. Stars are good. They usually don't stay long, there are no SAG concerns, and somehow they lend credibility by their presence.
Tim Robbins , fresh from receiving honors at a Sundance ceremony that celebrated him as that festival's guest of honor, showed up on Slumdance opening night.  He smoked a cigar in the screening room, but still it was good to have his picture to show the press, who would suddenly look upon Slumdance with new eyes.  (if John Waters shows up at your festival, be sure your camera is ready.  At Slumdance, he managed to tour the entire place, trailed by his own photographer and get out the door in 2 minutes flat.).
When the mainstream entertainment press comes around, don't even bother to tell them how innovative your festival is or try to get them to see some of your films.  Just roll off a list of stars who have stopped by -- that's all they're interested in, and it's the quickest way to be rid of them.

Step 9 : "Wear fashionable attire"
A few days before we left for park city, Vagrants Ann Closs and Saadia Goddard (who, with Rachel Hauck, were responsible for the art direction in the Slum ) went out shopping and came back with the Official Hat of Slumdance; a safety-orange beanie ( from Army Surplus) with a smiley -face  patch glued onto it. The orange smiley hats were the ugliest things any of us had ever seen, and we promptly put them on our heads.
Those hats turned out to serve two functions during Slumdance. First, all of the Vagrants were easily identifiable on the streets , even from very far away, aiding our promotional efforts. Second, the hats were soon in high demand-- and we had every limited supply. We wouldn't sell the hats, no matter who asked or how much was offered, but we told people that they could get them by becoming full-time volunteers for slumdance. It worked. We enlisted more than a dozen needed bodies as Vagrants during the Experience, and it would be foolish to believe the hats didn't have something to do with it.

Step 10: Don't Lose Your Focus
As your festivals build in momentum, you will probably notice a strange thing happened to you: You Forget that the whole thing started as a promotional effort for your film. As Slumdance grew to become a mecca for Park City visitors sick of the schmooze Scene elsewhere, I became convinced that we were providing a Sanctuary, not just an alternative film festivals, and I was hesitant to pollute our Sanctuary  with  self promotion. Beware of this happening to you -- it really ticks off the people associated with your film, who are the ones who threw down with all of the original hard labor that got your fest off the ground.
The people associated with Hang Your Dog in The Wind were probably right to be disturbed. I was so busy with Slumdance that I didn't call a single acquisitions executive.
Filled with the grass-roots Slumdance vibe, I was more worried about the 'real' people, and the film actually got a stunning response from our Park City audiences. We had to add an unscheduled screening to accommodate the people who had heard about the film by word of the mouth and came by the Slum to ask for it. That added screening was standing-room only, and I was surprised to see that people actually stood through the whole film.

Step 11 : Write An Article For Filmmaker
There's no such things as bad publicity, but there's no better publicity, than the kind you write yourself. After you pull off your alternative festivals, you'll have enough cred and insider knowledge to qualify you to write an article for Filmmaker . Exploit this opportunity. mention your movie's title at least three times.

Step 12: Plan The Future
Once you recover from executing your festivals ( average times: three weeks), you'll want to think about the future. You'll have many e-mails in your box asking " Are You going to do this again next year?" and " How can I get involved?" and even " I offer you my body."
While Slumdance has always been a bit self-conscious and snide on the surface, beneath that facade there is actually a sincere center burning with social/ political/ quasi-religoius fervor. At our meetings, away from public view, we talk about how we Did Something Important, and we want to keep doing it.
We have many plans. We want to be a road show, going town to town with our take on indie-film presentation. we want to stage " Con '97"  our answer to the Cannes Film Festival. We want to become a grass-roots collective to empower beginning filmmakers with information and other resources. In short, we have the kinds of plans that almost every other start-up festival has, with no money execute them.
How do you let the indie scene know that you're dying to do something important for the community, but you need financial support?
See Step 11. 
 

"...the so-called mundane, which people use as a word of contempt when they really mean 'earth.' What they don't see is the potential for glory, for envisionment that's inherent in even doing the dishes, in the soap suds... All theyhave to do is close their eyes and look." Stan Brakhage, Sight and Sound (1993)

What is "alternative" film and video? Good question; it's one makers and audiences have been
groping with for years. No one definition seems to please everybody.

There are, however, some common characteristics.
The works are generally short, non-narrative and structurally idiosyncratic,
though the makers often use narrative elements and conventional structures
in unconventional ways.

The media described in variety of names: experimental, fine art, avant garde,
personal, independent, and others. Though each term is inadequate to define
any one particular film, video or maker, and the definitions often overlap,
it is useful to distinguish their meanings.
You will find some attempts to define these terms below.

     Alternative: films and videos that provide an alternative to commercial media, dealing
     with subjects, points-of-view and formal elements not found in the mainstream. Some
     makers object to this term as it implies that the work exists only in relation to mainstream
     media, rather as a unique art form of its own.

     Experimental: the maker experiments with the medium, the production process, or the
     structure of the work, without necessarily knowing what the outcome will be. For
     example, the artist might try processing the film using the wrong chemistry, shooting the
     film through a rainy windshield, editing the story in a way that subverts the narrative, etc.

     Fine Art: media work that deals with many of the same concerns as fine art painting,
     sculpture, music and literature, exploiting the aspects that are unique to the film or video
     medium.

     Personal: the work reflects or contains elements of the maker's personal life, or reflects a
     highly subjective view of the world or the subject.

     Avant Garde: In French, literally means "advance guard," a military term for troops that
     led the attack across the battlefield. It is used to describe artwork that somehow breaks
     new ground and charts new territory.

     Independent: Work that is made outside of the Hollywood system. Though most
     experimental film and video falls into this category, it generally refers to non-Hollywood
     feature and documentary films.

     Underground: Also work that is made outside any commercial system. This term came
     about in the 1960s, where many film showcases began having shows in the basements of
     buildings, and/or showed clandestine works that were at odds with censorship or other
     laws.

You may also come across some of these terms:

     Structuralism: The elements of the work's production or structure become the subject,
     partly as a way to demystify the cinematic process. For example, a particular camera
     action might be repeated and studied. There was a movement of structural cinema in the
     1970s.

     Visionary: a term coined by P. Adam Sitney to describe work that allows us to see
     beyond the traditional boundaries of the physical, cultural and/or spiritual world.

     Expanded: A term coined by Gene Youngblood in his book Expanded Cinema to mean
     work that transgresses the normal boundaries of the viewing experience.

--- END --- (2 June 1999)