MicroCinema Scene

If you were wondering why the front page was dead for awhile, it’s because I was in OKC at deadCENTER 2007. I’ve been involved with this fest since it’s first year and it gets more and more awesome each year. I realize it’s probably off a lot of people’s radars because it’s located in Oklahoma City - but don’t let that turn you off because it is a really fun festival to attend.

I didn’t see as many movies as I would have liked this year, because there were so many great parties to attend, filmmakers to meet and old friends to hang out with. Here are a few personal highlights of deadCENTER 2007.

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By Omar Corral. Miguel Coyula is the creator of what may well be the cheapest feature film ever to be released commercially. Red Cockroaches (2003) [Review Link] could also be one of the most celebrated in the independent film festival scene worldwide. However, this is not the first project that he shot in the United States, as many believe. Some years ago, he was invited to the Rhode Island Latino Film Festival for a showing of his short student film Dancing on Needles (1998). As soon as friends and relatives found out he was coming over, he was able to travel to Miami, New York and San Francisco, also.  During those two or three weeks or so that he spent in the country, he took the opportunity to shoot what his acquaintances might have thought as just souvenir footage in different formats. On a couple of occasions, he got Adam Plotch, the award winning star of RC and a couple of other actors to perform what seemed to be only disjointed acting exercises. He even borrowed Plotch’s high school graduation videotapes and other memorabilia. Wherever he would go, he would always carry a plastic fork with him. Nobody would have guessed that once back in his native Cuba, after shooting a couple more scenes in Havana, and months and months of exhaustive editing, Coyula would be able to give enough coherence to such variety of material and actually make a movie out of it.

The reason why he carried around that mysterious piece of disposable silverware all the time was explained once he gave title to the results of his work. The Plastic Fork (2001) could pass for an experimental film at first sight, like most of his work as a student. However, it makes a whole lot more sense than any of the films he directed before RC. A closer look reveals that, even in a highly non-linear way, which obviously breaks the units of time and space; it’s not at all detached from the narrative format. Considering the way it –actually- presents a story and that it was truly shot without any budget, as opposed to RC, this movie could have gained Coyula more recognition than his best-known movie so far. Unfortunately, a popular public figure appears in the film without having given him authorization to use his image, and warned him not to show it in public without removing the footage in which he appears. Since Coyula would not subject his work to any kind of censorship or alteration of what he first intended, only a few have been able to see it privately. This movie is, to those of us who have been fortunate enough to watch it, his true legacy to independent filmmaking for its groundbreaking treatment of a story and the audacity he had to shoot it. By the same token, it’s also his testimony of the legal and moral limitations an independent filmmaker must face if he/she intends to have his/her work shown and given the respect it deserves.

A synopsis for this movie would roughly sound like this. Adam, a geek-looking character, dreams of a beautiful girlfriend like he’ll never have in reality. One night, in one of those dreams, his best friend warns them that there’s a murderer coming after them. They run away, but the mysterious killer catches up with the girl and injures her mortally. In her agony, she makes Adam swear to avenge her with an “ancient” plastic fork that she gives him. Once he awakes, he grows obsessed with finding the killer, although he knows that everything that happened was just a dream. Meanwhile, two gangsters who are dating the same girl confront each other after Adam threatens one of them over the other’s phone. The girl they are fighting over turns out to be Adam’s sister. At the same time, in Miami, a child girl grows more jealous of her younger sister every day, and plots a murderous scheme to get rid of her once and for all. All of this happens while an unnamed character that’s also accumulating frustration on her own counts backwards until the end, in which the plastic fork connects each one of these stories.  Even though all of them destroy themselves somehow, the possibility is open for the story to continue.

Coyula plays with different scenarios and possibilities. He leaves the audience to figure out which ones are really taking place. It’s never clear if the characters, especially in the plot line that concerns Adam, are really there or if they are only the product of each other’s imagination. One moment he’s talking to his best friend in a full baseball stadium, and the next there isn’t anyone else but the two of them. This character also disappears and reappears giving us the impression that Adam is only talking to himself among the loud baseball fans. In another scene, one moment Adam is arguing with a girl in a restaurant and the next he’s waiting in a subway station. There, he recognizes his best friend, who acts like a he had never seen him before. In both of these scenarios, he looks like he just came from his high school graduation; an event that was supposed to have taken place years ago. It’s almost like Adam is in several different places, confronting those who’ve wronged him all at the same time. Considering that the rest of the plot lines have the same gruesome ending as the one he’s in, it could also be that Adam is imagining he’s different people. On the other hand, he and everybody else in the story may live only in the imagination of a girl in San Francisco, who appears to be the only one who knows what’s going on since she’s counting backwards and finishes when all their fates come to a dead end, even hers. 

Coyula, an atheist, tries to find an explanation for the workings of the universe in terms of a strange dependency among its conscious beings. In his belief system, objects and thoughts link creatures rather than place or time. The filmmaker is also the true God among entities who have the power of manipulating their reality at whim, like gods themselves, whether they are aware of it or not. There’s a particular sequence in which a doll, an object typically made in resemblance to its creators and not able to act by itself, comes to life and impales itself in the fork. The only certain thing is that the main characters in each story line confront their greatest fears and give way to their frustrations by destroying them and themselves with the same object, unthinkable as a weapon. The banality of the means they use for this purpose reinforces the belief that fears are only as strong as we let them be. The plastic fork symbolizes such banality, or otherwise what their opponents see as the main characters’ weaknesses. The fact that they destroy themselves when they kill their enemies shows how their deep-rooted fears had become part of their very own essence. It also symbolizes, once somebody finds the fork broken along the seashore, the only common thing in landscapes all over the world: Trash, which is said to define individuals, and evokes contamination, and therefore, evilness. Adam also represents those unable to compete according to the standards of physical strength and beauty in a consumerist society, which by definition tends to destroy itself.  The fork as a symbol of this and Plotch’s hysterical performance set the tone for the entire movie, which leans more towards the farcical and the absurd.

In order to reflect these ideas and make up for his lack of time and resources, Coyula took many risks in the completion of this film. He makes close-ups of bystanders and freezes the frames in which they appear to insert lines of dialog into volutes, thus giving them an active role in the development of the story, without them knowing it. Any of them could have had the chance of taking advantage of their unawareness of his intentions.  He could have been accused of image misappropriation by any of them, just as the aforementioned “public figure” did.  Even some of the performers who willingly participated in the making of this film didn’t really know Coyula’s purpose. He also inserts footage from certain religious ceremonies. Considering the overall tone of this film and the author’s despise for religion, one could easily think that the sole purpose for this was to make fun of other’s people’s beliefs.

Nevertheless, this film has the free spirit that characterizes that remain a source of inspiration to new filmmakers and classics among film viewers, despite their commercial failure, and being widely misunderstood in their day. It brings to memory such titles as Fando & Lis, by Alejandro Jodorowsky, a seemingly disjointed piece, shoot almost just for fun, which the most conservative factions of Mexican society tried to keep from being shown and was thought lost for a long time. A better-known example would be Luis Buñuel’s An Andalusian Dog, which defied rules in the same fashion and made no concessions in its intention to communicate an artistic vision in all its integrity. Hopefully, there will be a way for Coyula to overcome these objections and have the wider audience this particular work deserves. It is a challenging piece that calls for the active participation of the viewer, and teaches the aspiring filmmaker that, when there are not enough resources, the only way to say something meaningful through cinema may be to take as many chances as his/her intentions call for. 

“Don’t let the bastards get you down.” – Kris Kristofferson

We all catch colds.  Each and every single one of us knows the sting of a sore throat, the force of an unexpected sneeze and the burn under the nose from blowing it too many times without the comfort of Puffs Plus.  But as the majority of the visitors to this website are creative artists, most of us have also been similarly felled by another, occasionally more long-lasting virus:  self-doubt.  Like the common cold, self-doubt can make you feel tired and lazy.  Your feet will drag and you won’t be able to bring your chin up.  Your drive to do anything other than lie in bed and watch TV overrides everything.  Like a cold, self-doubt has a number of different causes and when you get it, you feel like you’re the only one in the world that has it.  This is to let you know that all creative artists get saddled with this virus because we all experience, in some form or another, very comparable symptoms.

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By Andy Blood

Objectivity refers to the filmmaker’s reluctance to guide or manipulate viewers—the task of deciding what the film means is left to each individual. Ideally, a group of four friends, after watching an objective film, would have four different ideas about how to interpret what they saw. This position is very different from the classic Hollywood way of making a movie, in which the director/writer, at every turn, must ask how this or that will be understood by the audience.

Objective films tend to be voyeuristic by nature, that is, the director is concerned with watching and listening, rather than manipulating. It is true that no purely objective position can be achieved by any filmmaker—the selection of what comes through the lens, the editing process, the writing process, and many other factors prevent this. Even the bank or convenience store surveillance camera, by its very placement, must betray something of the operator’s preferences. While not being totally objective, though, the objective filmmaker is captivated by the ‘reality’ of a scene or character, and wants to show it as it is, without (to the extent possible) trying to color or prejudice anything that is before the lens. Objectivity means that the viewer of such a film is empowered by this voyeurism, because he or she is the final arbiter and judge of meaning, purpose, and interpretation.

Since the French New Wave, objective-style films have been regularly created, including: Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni 1966), Nashville (Robert Altman 1975), The American Friend (Wim Wenders 1977), Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax 1984), Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch 1986), All the Vermeers in New York (Jon Jost 1990), Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai 1998), and Full Frontal (Steven Soderbergh 2002), to name only a few. Another excellent example is Olivier Assayas’s 1996 film, Irma Vep, which one viewer described as having "not much story" but which was "fascinating to watch." The "documentary feel" which many viewers say they experience when watching one of these films, comes from the de-emphasized plots of objective films. Plot is reduced (or occasionally done away with) in favor of increased sensory experience, heightened feeling of ‘reality’, and greater character development. Sometimes, as with Fallen Angels, the director’s sense of style alone, can propel the movie forward, with very little help from the plot.

The techniques of objectivity in film vary, but can be outlined. The music that accompanies the film doesn’t tell you how to feel (Blow-Up, Down By Law), it rather exists almost as an independent entity, and sometimes, like an errant character, mysteriously disappears. The real-life feeling of chaos, especially when heard as background noise or dialog, can be a strong part of these films (Nashville, Boy Meets Girl). The lengthy use of wide shots (All the Vermeers in New York), panning instead of editing (Irma Vep), and shots in which the actors are barely or even surreptitiously seen (Full Frontal), all tend to eliminate the ‘set-up look’ that identifies mainstream scenes. In general, objective films tend to cut less often, eschewing the modern TV-style of editing. In Down By Law, the camera lingers in medium and wide shots, allowing the individual viewer to decide which character to look at and for how long (a job which the subjective director often usurps).

Another frequent characteristic of objectivity is its natural affinity for ambiguity, for not explaining every detail, for allowing the viewer to do some or even most of the work of interpreting. Why, for instance, does Bruno Ganz’s character abandon Dennis Hopper on the beach, in The American Friend? How did the three prisoners escape in Down By Law (and who cares how?)? This is not mere sloppiness, but comes, I think, from the filmmaker’s delight in spotting and leaving open multiple explanations, or for provoking speculation (or simply because that part of the plot is of no interest). Another good example is the mysterious and oft-analyzed Persona, Bergman’s 1966 film about a patient who will not speak and a nurse who has much to say. Bergman had strong ideas about what all the scenes in this film meant, and various lovers of the film have stated their (differing) opinions as well. In one of the few truly defining issues of film objectivity, it is important to state that the filmmaker here or anywhere else in the objective universe, is not God, and that all fair-minded opinions are equally valid, from Bergman’s to yours and mine. There is no orthodox explanation (except your own).

An adjunct to story ambiguity is the mysterious central character, about whom we can only speculate when the pictures is over, like Maggie Cheung’s character (herself) in Irma Vep. In defiance of the petty, scriptwriting-class tyrants, this hero/heroine moves through the world learning more than he/she reveals, the progeny, perhaps, of Monica Vitti and Anna Karina in films like The Eclipse and My Life to Live.

Objectivity doesn’t appeal to all filmmakers or film watchers. Critics’ primary displeasure comes from the philosophical premise of objectivity, the uncertainties and ambiguity it flourishes in, its refusal to pilot an audience along toward a stated goal. Objectivity feels soft to these people, a lazy, artsy person’s approach to what some believe is a ‘craft’ (as well as a business) and not an art. Not stating a goal (I’m going to scare you, make you root for a side, teach you something, make you laugh, etc.) pisses them off and raises cries of cheating, of playing tennis without a net. Even the lack of an exact definition of an objective film is upsetting to those who would rather operate on what they believe is more solid ground.

To the objective filmmaker, these criticisms are irrelevant. The real strength of objectivity lies in the fact that reality (or at least the altered reality of film) is often more interesting than the re-heated old plots and exhausted stock characters that find their way again and again into modern films. You’re not going to understand everything in life, and objective films are not puzzles that have, in the end, neat solutions, like parlor room games or TV mysteries. Subjective films are often ends in themselves, being statements or entertainment or propaganda, with a very clear agenda (which is exactly what many people want in a movie!). The worlds in these films close in on themselves, as ‘the point’ is finally made (usually, to our disappointment). Objectivity, if done well, opens outward into the world. It raises more questions than it tries to answer, it evokes a sense of mystery, which, if we don’t close our eyes, is an integral part of the human experience.

I think that objective filmmaking is ripe for further experimentation, and has yielded only a tiny portion of its potential. Objectivity, by allowing the filmmaker to drop the burden of the traditional plot-heavy movie and its plot-associated techniques, and by worrying less about markets and ‘the audience’, can be very freeing. The results can be amazingly original, like Harmony Korine’s 1997 Gummo. Without big money pressure (and its insistence on making a big-audience pleasing film) indies are in the best position to make some serious advancement in objective filmmaking.

Andy Blood - Wolf Gang Pictures, LLC

In Radio, what is commercially heard is not what is culturally happening. You can guarantee the same logic applies to music videos. The music video industry is controlled by the major distributors of music. The marketing systems that are in place force commercial products right into the hands of the consumer and ahead of underground artists’ work. How do you compete with that?

Jesse Russell Brooks is the director of an underground music video commissioned by Change Everything Music in Los Angeles, CA. Once he was on board in July 2004, the small label stuck Brooks with that exact same problem to solve.

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When it comes to getting attention in the micro-budget world, it’s almost as important to create an eye-catching trailer as it is to actually produce a good movie.  A trailer that creates good word of mouth or attracts the attention of a random viewer at one’s website can make all the difference in reaching an audience.  The following is a random selection of trailers I’ve downloaded from the internet over the past year, and my initial reactions.

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Riding high Jurassic Park-style in a jeep through Custer County in South Dakota during the week of Microcinema Fest 2004, I realized one of the things I’d often sold about the fest, but not really looked at myself, was the huge amount of genuine tourist attractions in the area.  Aside from Mount Rushmore and the badlands, I didn’t know just how many extraordinary attractions there were in the Black Hills.  This year I would see Crazy Horse and the accompanying Native American museum, drive so close to an angry buffalo in Custer State Park that one moviemaker wanted to feed her his lunch and was warned sternly not to, just miss the 1812 Train as it pulled out of the station, and play a round of pirate-themed Mini Golf with 14 people that will go down in my personal history as one of the best times I’ve ever had. These were really great times, and they served as pre-festival highlights during the “camp” part of the week – a section of Microcinema Fest 2004 that I initially believed we, as festival organizers, had really screwed-up.

Microcinema Fest 2004 and “Boot Camp” flyers in a local downtown shop window.

At the start of the week, however, I was rather preoccupied with preparations for the boot camp classes for which people from Rapid City had signed-up, and for which John Oak Dalton and I had agreed to teach.  Last we had heard, only about ten people were going to be our audience for several hours while we attempted to teach lessons about screenwriting, lighting, editing, coming up with no-budget concepts and various makes of video cameras.  In the weeks leading up to the festival, I hadn’t any time to worry about these classes, as promotion of the festival was so last minute.  My time otherwise occupied, once I was on the plane to Denver, I finally found some free moments to compose an outline to follow during my teachings Tuesday and Wednesday at the Dahl Arts Center.  And as I was writing up this outline, channeling some of what I remembered from film school and fusing it with the past seven year’s worth of practical experience, one scary fact occurred to me that really hadn’t yet consciously made itself known – I had never formally taught a classroom of people.

The thought kept becoming more and more prevalent in my mind, and as I was meeting with John Oak Dalton only hours before our first class to compare notes, my newness to teaching was just about all I could think of.  I kept telling myself “I know about moviemaking and I know what I should teach,” but that didn’t seem to take the edge off.  Even John’s seriously laid-back manner and approach to the “boot camp” didn’t calm my nerves. I kept trying to remind myself this was no different than teaching the dozen or so friends I had taught moviemaking tricks to over the years while working with Random Foo Pictures, Jodom Pictures and my own MINDSCAPE PICTURES back in Boston. Also, I’d done a fair amount of formal one-on-one tutelage in some aspects of moviemaking as for a while several ago my evenings were consistently being booked by appointments to teach people how to edit.  Finally, this past year I had two speaking engagements in front of rooms filled with twenty or so eager listeners, one of them at my alma mater, Emerson College.  I should have felt prepared for this.  But still, I didn’t.

Nervous as Yankees Fan walking through Boston’s North End, I took the stage at the Dahl Arts Center and quickly relinquished microphone duties to John Oak Dalton who, with alarming grace and brevity, managed to succinctly introduce himself.  He then handed the mic to me and my voice cracked, a shaking hand gripping the mic and betraying whatever credentials I was trying to impress the dozen or so people in the room with. “It is what it is,” I said to myself, practicing the mantra that would become this year’s festival motto.

Luckily, John’s smart, quick outlining of the principles of screenwriting reawakened the desire in me to talk about this thing I most love (moviemaking - for those of you not keeping up) and soon I was eagerly adding points throughout John’s lecture as he had invited me to do.  By the time he passed the mic to me for a “drill down” about how to come up with strong “no-budget” concepts that people could actually make and complete, I was excited to talk to the audience.  Somewhere around now was when twenty-or-so more students from a local college came in to watch the ending of our lecture and the rest of the program which was to be handled by their own professor, a very informative guy named Jay Roman.  They didn’t faze me a bit.  I was rolling on the topic and having a lot of fun with it.

Both that day and the following day were excellent times for John and I.  People really responded quite well to our teachings, and the course evaluations we were handed at the end of the second day were shockingly praise worthy.  Jay Roman too did very well with the audience, his stream-of-consciousness style both conversational and informative.  But one lad didn’t fare all that well with his marks, and unfortunately he was the lead-in both days for the “boot camp.” While Eddie Yaroch, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based writer/director who made a feature-length, 16mm kids film called Class President may have been a nice guy and may have had a number of interesting war stories about bringing his first movie to life, giving him a total of six hours to speak about those war stories was just poor planning on the part of the “boot camp” planners.  Eddie, for his part, made a pretty valiant effort to fill the hours, but by the time he pulled out his moviemaker’s journal and started reading it verbatim to the class, people were starting to nod off.  It was a tough act to follow for John and I, and probably a tough one to recover from for a tired audience.

This scheduling blunder aside, the “boot camps” somewhat captured the spirit of the “roundtables” that I had so wanted to make part of Microcinema Fest 2004.  It was an organized forum for the focused discussion of movie related issues, and though it was mostly a teacher-student dynamic rather than the whole “level playing field” approach that I was pulling for, it was a lot of fun. We decided this needed to be a part of the festival for years to come. During both the first and second day, several of the attending no-budget moviemakers came along and participated in the classes.  Both John and I believed they too got something out of our presentations and that such classes could benefit future Microcinema Fest attendees.

While “boot camp” was a success, my feelings about our annihilation of the “camp” aspect of this festival hung over me like a black cloud all during the first day of the festival.  With only myself, my wife Sheri, John Dalton, Tyler Wilson, Wally Fong and the three No Name Films guys in attendance (Jeremy Neander, Jay Neander and Jon Solita), I started to talk a lot about what we did wrong.  Why weren’t there more people there at the start of things?  Had we, in our efforts to legitimize and widen the profile of the festival, managed to kill what most of us believed was the best part of it?  Without a doubt, the highlight and individuality of the REwind Fest was the social nature of the event, and in previous years people often remarked it’s what would bring them back to Rapid City again and again.  But where were these people this year?

The answer was quite simple: they were still coming – just later in the week.  By last count, there were something along the lines of thirty or so moviemakers planning on attending from Thursday through Sunday, while only a handful signed-up for the full week. This was still somewhat disheartening though, because this year we tried to make the beginning of the week more structured and more fun.  By creating the “boot camp” and the “Chris Hull Bus Trip” we had something for people to do during the day (if they weren’t just there to shoot their own movies, which is something we certainly supported as well) and by arranging affordable lodging at the dorms, we created a really fun atmosphere conducive to sharing and bonding.  My theory?  In past years, while the beginning of the weeks were fun, they were very disorganized, with people often just sitting around and waiting at Linn Productions for someone to make a decision about what everyone was going to do together. Out of this waiting came some great fun, off-the-cuff moviemaking and bonding moments.  But often too, boredom resulted.  Perhaps many people remembered this and elected to stay home?

Also, another theory came to me; one that I believe carried more validity.  This year was the first year the festival’s intention was to exhibit the very best stuff that could be found in Microcinema, not just in the REwind community.  Now by doing this, I believe we upped the average age of those whose work was accepted.  This is partially because more practice creates better work over time (hence, an older moviemaker) and also because the once “young” REwind community who used to attend the full week’s event (originally in their early to mid twenties) were now a bit older.  And whenever you add age, you add responsibility – work, money, significant others, etc.  Suddenly getting a full week off from life to visit Rapid City for a movie festival doesn’t seem very practical.  This realization made all of the festival organizers wonder if maybe the festival needed to be shortened to just a four day event, something which I believe is still being weighed in the minds of all of us.

Regardless of my perceived failure of the festival to attract people for the full week’s program, after the first night of insane mini-golf with those who were in attendance, I started to feel like maybe a small initial turnout was a good thing.  For his part, John Oak Dalton didn’t seem in the least concerned about the turnout at the dorms.  Initially he teamed up with Wally Fong and the three No Name Films guys to become what he called “The Five Deadly Venoms.” After waking up from a very long sleep, Oregon moviemaker Tyler Wilson too joined this group along with Tuesday’s arrival, Miguel Coyula from New York City, to form the newly dubbed “Magnificent Seven.” There was a very real bond forming between the guys at the dorms, and it would continue to strengthen throughout the week as their very different personalities continued to find more and more in common with one another.  On a small scale, exactly what the organizers had hoped would happen was taking place just as it did every year.  People were making friends and creating memories that they would look back on very fondly for the rest of their lives.  To have been able to be a part of this - even if it was for only for a few people initially - made me feel like every headache I had prior to the festival was worth it.

The barbeque and barnside screenings.

So along with the “dorm rats” (another John Dalton-created moniker), Sheri and I were re-joined by fellow MINDSACPE PICTURES peeps Roman Berman and Stacey Monty (who had been visiting a nearby Mammoth fossil site while I was teaching at the Dahl at the start of the week) for the annual Barnside Screenings at “Linn Ranch,” typically a highlight of the festival during which several of the movies not showing as “official festival selections” are projected on the side of… well, y’know… a barn. This year, however, the screenings got a late start thanks to some ridiculously strong wind and cold weather that threatened to cancel this bit of tradition.  Somehow, the weather didn’t stop us from playing an insane game of volleyball that proved (if there was ever any doubt) that moviemakers should never, ever try to prove their athleticism.

Santo and Coyula look to the heavens for deliverence from the volleyball game before the barnside screenings.

Fortunately, the wind abated just enough that we were able to fire up the old LCD projector for the movie Jaimie Bondo, a ridiculous, subtitled and very funny riff on James Bond. No Name Films’ two editions of The Shell Safety Series followed with many laughs and then one of Miguel Coyula’s “lighter” short works was shown, a mock trailer freakishly mixing over-the-top Tarantino-style posturing, wacked-out Hollywood cheese lines, fake critical raves and a bit of David Lynch madness.  Midway though the viewing of one of my latest short movies, a ditty called Apparition Apparent that was probably too serious for the crowd anyway, the threatening rain finally started and we packed it in for the night. Knowing we had to reconvene in the morning at the NAU dorms for Film Commissioner Chris Hull’s bus tour of some of the area’s cool locations, it was probably a good idea to call it an early night.

The “bus trip” ended up being very informal at first, an occurrence that would have had me worried had more people been in attendance. As it turns out, the bus Mr. Hull had reserved for this sojourn was absconded with by another section of the state tourism department. But since only a few of the “dorm rats” were making the trek along with Sheri, Roman, Stacy and I, Roman and Stacey took my now damaged rental car (the victim of my backing into a pole behind the Dahl Arts Center) and Sheri and I climbed into Chris Hull’s giant SUV along with Wally Fong, Miguel Coyula, John Dalton, Jon Solita and Jeremy Neadner.  Before we knew it, we were four wheeling in open jeeps through Custer State Park on dirt roads, spying on buffalo (and videotaping their “movements,” if you will) and taking in some of the most gorgeous views any of us city clickers had ever seen.  There’s no doubt in my mind that all of the moviemakers in attendance were trying to come up with stories that could somehow involve such a rich, beautiful (and free) landscape.  I imagine the phrase “startling views of magnificent vistas” will soon be appearing in reviews of some no-budget work.

The group at Custer State Park

After rolling around Custer and eating what may have been the greatest box lunch ever, (amazing food… seriously), we rushed to get over to a tourist attraction called the 1812 Train for another sight-seeing trip.  Unfortunately, thanks to an uncharacteristically slow driving and mean-streaked local with a penchant for knife-waving (don’t ask), we were unable to get to our destination on time.  Just as we pulled into the parking lot, the 1812 Train started rollicking down the tracks without us.  Fortunately, as a back-up plan we paid a visit to the Crazy Horse monument and the Native American museum situated nearby.  It was an awe-inducing site, this gigantic rock edifice, and even if you don’t necessarily believe in the politics of its construction (like some Rapid residents with whom I spoke), the story of its construction is fascinating.  If you ever get a chance to see this monument (which dwarfs Rushmore) and the Native American museum, I greatly suggest you do so.

Well, after such a full day, one would think the crew were ready to retire for the evening, but it was Thursday already and that meant one thing: the festival was about to kick-off in just a few short hours.  Heading back to Rapid City, I was quiet on the car ride as questions again began to surface in my mind.  They were questions about the quality of the festival and whether we really did enough to put on a good show.  There were concerns about the attendance and whether last year’s audience would return.  And finally, there was rumination about whether or not Richard Hatch was the right man for the job of “festival spokesperson.”

Regardless, I figured we had made our bed and now it was time to lie in it.  “It is as it is,” I repeated to myself.  Nothing was going to change that at this point.

Next up… the screenings, Richard Hatch and the after parties.  A festival gets real.

As the plane touched down in Denver, Colorado where I would pick up my connecting flight to Rapid City, South Dakota, I realized I was a bit sentimental for the long drive I usually take to Rapid from the Mile High City.  This would be the first year I would fly into Rapid City Regional Airport for the annual no-budget cinema festival I’ve attended twice out of its first three years.  But this wasn’t the only change both the festival, and I, would face this year.  In fact, this was just another in a long line of changes that occurred over the six months leading up to the festival.

After writing several rather critical articles of the third annual Rewind International Media Festival for this website in 2003, I had put myself in a position of a backseat driver. And is there really anything more annoying than an opinionated loudmouth who does little more than criticize?

I think not.

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“September 11th, 2001 rocked the very foundations of American society and put the entire world on notice that no person or thing is safe. We now live in an age when fear lurks within our everyday life, and Horror has a duty to reflect these concerns in a way that other genres are unable to, just as it has done in times past.” – Calum Waddell, Horror Journalist and Fearless Tales Panelist

On March 11th –15th in San Francisco at the Victoria Theatre, Fearless Tales Genre Fest (http://www.fearlesstales.com/) showed some of the most innovative, and truly fearless, independent films that have been made since the tragedy of 9/11 and other catastrophic and violent events of recent years.

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The Florida Film Festival in Orlando is all that you would want in a film festival and then some, more than 100 features and shorts spread out over almost two weeks’ time.  It is a real clash of cultures and ideas; as well as the odd sight of seeing people longing to go inside on beautiful clear sunny days, one is also treated to Hollywood players rubbing elbows with college-aged auteurs and PR-hungry student “street teams,” DV epics screened right alongside the new Nicole Kidman movie, and more.

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