I see people talk about making three features
a year. Everybody wants to work at Fassbinder’s rate. Well, remember, the man died very young…
but I can say that the pressure to seem relevant
has increased, and I feel that wasted momentum
is death to the brand.
Amir Motlagh sets out to eradicate “division of labor” filmmaking with
whale, an elliptical work pulsing with a restlessness of purpose and vision. Motlagh and his film wear a love-hate relationship with mumblecore on their respective sleeves—a condition which seems, ultimately, inevitable. In the following interview, Motlagh discusses the overwhelming pressures of the Internet and the increasing irrelevance of “ethnic identity” films.
Read the rest of this entry »
Alejandro Adams: Introduction
A few days ago, Mona Nicoara
reported on Twitter that a panel of critics and luminaries assembled to address contemporary Romanian films quickly gave way to a discussion of the distribution crisis: “It seems that these days the topic doesn’t matter any more,” she said. “All discussion ends up being about distribution in 7 min or less.”
This reboot of BRAINTRUSTdv owes much to Twitter, so it shouldn’t be surprising to see some content fueled exclusively by that microblogging platform. With the exception of one, each of the roundtable contributors below was engaged in (or witness to) a recent Twitter dust-up over the concept of self-distribution—and I do mean “concept,” as it quickly became clear that each combatant was working from his own personal definition of that phrase. Intrigued, I proposed this roundtable, outlining the parameters in the 140-character limit of Twitter: “700 - 1000 words on self-distribution vs. existing infrastructure (critics/fests/distribs).”
I left participation open to anyone within earshot, which might seem rashly uncuratorial—and in keeping with that boldness, I’ve left the entries completely unedited and situated them according to the order in which they were received. If this sounds haphazard or cavalier, I urge you to read my introduction to the site itself and contend with the guiding principles expressed there.
The superficial formality of this enterprise obscures the fact that maintaining an “appropriate” context for the exchange of ideas is growing less tenable. Twitter itself is possibly the worst context for the expression of a complex thought—an aphoristic attractiveness masks a sometimes egregious lack of exactitude—but that doesn’t deter those who feel compelled to speak their minds. As tensions subsided that afternoon and I began to recruit these disparate voices, Reid Gershbein noted, “The film community isn’t a group with the same goals, just the same demons.” An inexact but useful thought—I can’t help but wonder whether the spirit of that observation is refuted or reinforced in the contributions below.
Read the rest of this entry »
There is no balls-to-the-wall killer blowjob
DVD menu I could possibly produce that
would make my film any better…
David Spaltro financed his first feature film with $175,000 spread out over forty credit cards. Eschewing festivals, he four-walled the finished film in a Tribeca theater. A recent deal with
Cinetic means we’ll probably be able to find
…Around on iTunes and Netflix Instant soon enough. Nonethless, Spaltro continues to send DVD screeners to anyone who wants one. The hard-scrabble DIY swagger on display here seems anachronistic, evoking New York in the mid-eighties. This may not be the crest of a new trend, but it’s certainly a refreshing change of pace.
Read the rest of this entry »
The delinquent viewer wonders if haphazard
violations and recontextualizations of a
given film might not yield a better, fuller
experience than the author intended.
In a capitalist society, technology is not a tool. It’s bling.
A.O. Scott recently amused himself in the pages of the New York Times by itemizing the “movie” screens (potential or active) which surrounded him as he struck a presumably lazy pose on his couch. Though the subversive undertones may have erupted unchecked in an earlier draft of that article, the antiseptic back-me-up-here graphic representation of “our” viewing habits seemed to upstage his laconic prose. Whatever he was saying, it was unconvincing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Does the cycle of incorporation and commodification come so quickly on the heels of
the avant-garde today that we are left with the stultifying aura of “history” surrounding such movements as Dogme 95?
Is there any question today that all cultural productions contain theories—trace or overt—of their own production? Not just on a material level, but on an ideological one, as well. Postmodernism was an essentially democratic movement because its metanarratives—its self-consciousness, its parody, its pastiche, its irony—always worked to make visible the codes that underlie cultural productions. Perhaps this is disputed by many of the well-meaning professorial theorists, whose dying influence still depends upon the supposed ability to demystify popular culture.
Read the rest of this entry »
