I remember when Indie Meaning?
Remember the early days of independent film? Those were the days of "Eraserhead" and "Mala Noche" and "Crumb" and "Pi" and "El Mariachi" and "Clerks" and even "Roger and Me." Remember how exciting it was to see the dominant mode of production our time making the movie, put in the hands of a normal person who can live with you? Or it could even be you?
I remember when the big ten, maybe twenty, if you clean your bank account and make the most of your credit cards and asked all his friends and neighbors and relatives and even people he barely knew, but he bought drinks? And it was worth?
Portland independent filmmaker Andy Mingo wants to know two things about the independent film: first, is alive and well in Portland, Oregon, and secondly there is a difference between the history of independent cinema, the current takeover film company independent, and are calling really Independent Film.
Andy Mingo is the director of The iconographer, a new independent feature film currently under consideration in the festival circuit this year. Written, directed and edited by Mingo, the iconographer was made with a budget of less than $ 20,000 with local actors who worked for the cheese and wine and his wife's lasagna in the oven.
Mingo entire film shot in locations around Portland, Oregon, from a local liquor store, a sand beach on the river, to the stores, the interior of cars, and strip clubs. Chambers came from donations of equipment and lenders Northwest Film Center. The actors were aware of local production and jobs and bars and the passion to do something because you just do not be. The music came from Mingo people had known for years. The type of sound had a day's work. Almost everyone did.
The story of The iconographer has a foot in the history of independent film and one foot in the territory of Mingo's calling Independent Film truth. According to The New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Cain, "The iconographer is personal, funny, smart, incredibly, a small story with big waves that resonates on many levels, from the perfect tone portrait of family dynamics, their socio and political allegory ... And there is not enough fake blood to keep things interesting. "
The true independent film, according to Andy Mingo, still works from the beginning, and highlights the history of the small and human. Besides "The iconographer," Andy Mingo has written, directed and produced six short films that have appeared in various national festivals and examinations, including Longbaugh Film Festival, Northwest Film and Video Festival, PDX Film Festival, and monitoring of the Northwest - V.11 Short Film Journal. Mingo is a professor of Information Sciences at Clackamas Community College and the author of the novel, east of Elko. Chiasmus Press also runs one of the award winning Portland independent literary press. And it's on a mission to advocate for the Independent Film true.
Indie used to be. Unfortunately, in 2009, "Independent Film" has become another branded device to sound a lot of money movies ... of the hip. The winners of the Sundance Film Festival feature Hollywood actors and big money sponsors. Fox uses the "Searchlight", like a mask hipster. And Warner Independent Pictures? Really? Let's face it. The commercialization of independent cinema has been eaten alive and shit to consumers as current glamorous enough money to burn can buy to impress your friends and feel ... nervous. Independent Film truth, according to Mingo, is a return and a wave of the future.
2009 Portland, Oregon, well, we are a petri dish. For example. Gus Van Sant made "Mala Noche" in 1985 for $ 20,000. He gained fame during the night in the festival circuit, and the Los Angeles Times named him the year's best independent film. It took "Drugstore Cowboy" and "Own My Private Idaho" to nail New Line Cinema, and the rest is history. So by all accounts, Portland should be a hotbed for more incredible Gus Van Sant, and particularly independent cinema at its best.
In many respects, it is. Independent filmmakers as filmmakers have Andy Mingo and James Westby, documentary filmmakers Brian Lindstrom and Andrew Blubaugh and experimental filmmakers like Miranda July and Matt Mcormick keep it real, according to Mingo, creating fires Independent Film of truth.
It used to be that when people talked about independent publishing or music or art-indie film that most art understands that subverts the genre. Not only in terms of content and style and mode of production but also in terms of audience and broadcast to a disruption of the capital. You could hear the best music in a rat hole center, the music born in someone's garage or courageous children squatting in abandoned houses to practice your licks. You could turn to the best literature from hand to hand passing in the street or in bars or alleys. You can witness the rebirth of the film in a cinema arthouse than half the price of the Cineplex, and feel baptized after instead of butter and covered in chocolate.
But nowadays, even trying to enter the circuit of film festivals that dot the country, means having to compete with companies backed films made by directors already established in the big budget Hollywood with actors and the distribution of go to the highest bidder. Movies like "The iconographer" are basically against the industry studios. And there is no way to cook lasagna enough to compete with that.
However, the filmmaker insists that Andy Mingo Independent Film truth is still being made, and indeed, could have the possibility of something the corporatization of independent films can not absorb enough:
Mira. Independent filmmakers have not disappeared or did not do that thing they do. They just have more difficulty seeing that ever since "indie" has become a genre in the market. Do not get me wrong, there are a number of big movies coming out of the market independent of the company. But there must be a distinction between the products of polished, well-financed and produced films in the true spirit of true independent film. I do not think less people should do their own films. I think more people should.
It's a hopeful feeling about now. It is true independent filmmakers, as well as people who can not stop making music, you can not stop writing the manifesto closet, close-knit communities survive and donations and dinners in the homes of others. So even while we are paying about $ 8 these days to see a blockbuster or check our mailboxes for the next Oscar winner Netflix, I'm secretly hoping Mingo is right:
No time for despair. In the darkest days of 2009 when things went to hell, redefinitions are possible. It may be that more and no less art forms available. People are sitting in front of Macs People have more access to the cameras. With all that money on the line, his career grow and disappear at the speed of light, and movies that do not sink rough. It is true independent film can sink because we are not tied to anything, but people who make them.
For Mingo, True Independent Cinema "is exactly like a petri dish, things that are only allowed to grow. Things that normal people have a way to ... dangerously prosperous. "
Yuknavitch Lidia is the author of three collections of short fictions - Real to Reel (FC2, 2002), their mouths Others (House of Bones Press, 1997) and the excess of Liberty (FC2, 2000) - and a critical book , Allegories of Violence (Routledge, 2000). His writing has appeared in Postmodern Culture, Fiction International, Another Chicago Magazine, Zyzzyva, Matrix criticism, other voices, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies Representing Bisexualities (NYU Press) and Third Wave Agenda (University of Minnesota Press). She has co-editor of Northwest Edge: Deviant Fictions and editor of two girls review. She teaches fiction and literature in Oregon.
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