Both a huge party and something of a petri dish of American independent creativity, SXSW is steadily becoming an invaluable stop on the festival circuit. The Austin festival is also the forerunner of a whole slew of American festivals that are proud to be far from New York and LA, and more importantly, far from Park City. So it’s no surprise that the festival would break even more ground in the decentralization of the independent film experience. This year, SXSW and IFC have teamed to offer five films on-demand via IFC Festival Direct, allowing viewers at home to see festival premieres on the same day the play for Austin audiences.
For a midwesterner such as myself, this is tremendously good news. The elephant in the room when talking about any artwork is always access. Who is it for, and who can actually see it? For many, entering the current discussion surrounding independent film is simply an economic impossibility. SXSW is very friendly toward the average-Joe or Jane attendee, especially compared to many other festivals, but a plane ticket and a pass are still a serious expense. It would be easy for the festival organizers to pay lip service to the idea of creating an event for more than just the elite, and then do nothing about it. Instead, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for actively attempting to engage people who want to attend the festival, but can’t.
That said, the “festival at home” experience is far from flawless. Despite the fact that I’m pretty close to the ideal candidate for this type of thing, I don’t have the right kind of cable package required to see on-demand movies. I’ve often considered anteing up for better cable just for IFC, but for the most part a high-speed internet connection and Netflix subscription keep me occupied, and they are a big enough chunk of my monthly budget. So while audiences can technically watch these festival films anywhere, there’s still a large barrier to access, and it still comes down to cost. So I spent the weekend calling up friends, interviewing them about what kind of cable they have, then sheepishly asking if I could invite myself over to watch a few movies. Luckily, I have gracious friends.
On Saturday Paul and I went over to his mother’s house to watch Joe Swanberg’s latest film, Alexander the Last. A few business items: Paul is the same Paul with whom I co-host FilmCouch, Spout’s weekly podcast. Also, Spout has collaborated with Joe Swanberg in the past; he and Ronald Bronstein produced an original web series for us called Butterknife, and they provided video coverage of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. If you’re familiar with Joe’s work, talk of creative cross-pollination comes as no surprise. His productions are intimate affairs made by an ever-expanding group of collaborators. SXSW has played a key role in these collaborations, both by embracing Swanberg’s work (this is the fourth film he’s premiered there), and by providing an atmosphere in which artistic pretense is rejected in favor of sharing passions over beer and BBQ.
For me, the SXSW premiere of Swanberg’s previous film, Nights and Weekends, was like an unintentional social network meet-up. I began chatting with the folks around me and recognizing name after name. One person writes for this blog, another guy was the DP on this other movie I saw yesterday, and on and on. Watching a Swanberg premiere at Paul’s mom’s house, on the other hand, was a wholly different experience. As the opening credits rolled, we did find ourselves playing mumblecore bingo, picking out names we recognized. But as the film got underway it was much easier to focus on what was on screen. Even easier, perhaps, than if Joe were sitting two rows in front of me and I were wondering which party to go to later.
I’ve often wondered if Joe’s films work as social events more than as actual movies. But I was pleasantly surprised that Alexander the Last still gave me plenty to chew on. The film follows an ensemble of young actors and musicians dealing with temptation, and struggling with how to portray sex and all that goes along with it, while keeping their relationships and themselves intact. The film certainly feels autobiographical, at least in its themes. It’s evident that this is the product of a somewhat insular community of artists, but that subtext doesn’t detract much from the work itself. Seeing the film in a living room adorned with a lacy Victorian pastiche –– complete with Paul’s mom walking in during a pretty explicit sex scene –– helped confirm that Swanberg’s films do work on their own, thousands of miles from the hip little bubble they’ve created.
On Sunday I crashed another friend’s place for a double feature of Three Blind Mice and Zift. Three Blind Mice premiered at Toronto this past fall. It’s written and directed by Matthew Newton, who also plays one of three Australian naval officers on their last night home before redeployment. Newton glows with mischievous energy on screen, bouncing between darkly comic disasters. The film could have handled its emotional weight with more skill, but it’s still a nice example of a filmmaker taking stock of the emotional effects of war without dealing directly with its politics. While Three Blind Mice would certainly be fun to see at the festival, it loses very little when translated to the small screen. It strikes me as a film that could enjoy a healthy life through on-demand and video even without the boost of the IFC Festival Direct co-premiere.
Zift, on the other hand, felt out of place on the small screen. The film, produced in Bulgaria, is an arty, Eastern Bloc take on conventional film noir. The production value was a little spotty, and despite being in black and white, the lighting was rather flat. It had its moments, especially a gritty noir twist at the end, but I couldn’t help but feel that it would have played much better in a crowded midnight screening, where elements that are cool and weird for their own sake can thrive off of excitement from the audience.
Overall, IFC’s Festival Direct is a great step in the right direction. For all the talk about how the internet is forever changing the face of independent film, relatively little has been done to push initial distribution to the scope the web allows. This leads to my one suggestion about how this experience could dramatically improve: let users pay to stream on-demand content online, not just through cable. Seven dollars per film is perfectly reasonable, but many indie film fans don’t have the requisite expensive cable packages. The internet, on the other hand, is far more ubiquitous. Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes have all devised ways to securely stream movies; how great would it be if we could stream them the same day as their festival premiere?
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