Cinefile

Last week I attended the Opening Night of the Hola Mexico Film Festival in Chicago. The opening film, Sucedió En Un Día, is a feature length compilation of various shorts filmed and edited by an array of filmmakers over a 24-hour period in La Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The result - a curious, revealing and sometimes frustrating experience (some shorts were better than the others, e.g. a genre monster-spoof involving a towering, murderous lobster) with notable onscreen talent like Adriana Barraza (Babel) and Guillerimo Villegas (Sin Nombre). By the end of the film, I looked forward to recommending the title to some of my colleagues. The idea was that some time over the next couple of weeks, they’d be able to catch a showing during the festival’s run. But then I made a discovery in my festival program book: The HMFF was only playing in Chicago a mere five days before heading to Washington D.C. and then on to New York the following week.

This was not bad news. It struck me then that the HMFF was following a nouveau film fest structure: target smaller audiences with niche films and a shorter, more exclusive window of opportunity to actually see the film. This business model is liberating; as opposed to the now bloated size of such mega festivals like SXSW or Sundance, the HMFF could bring the fest to the people and thus divvy up its catalogue of films among its selected cities. And the trend has already caught on. Last fall, Range Life Entertainment went on a tour across the states taking smaller, indie films to various cinemas and venues for exhibition. Headed by Todd Sklar and his team of film troubadours, these guys basically piled their gear into a van and lived out the DIY-mentality of the very filmmakers whose work they were showcasing. Range Life achieved something very special with their fall tour and in this earlier Cinefile.com interview Sklar explains the intimacy between the viewer and the actual movie itself. Essentially, since movie fans knew that these titles were possibly never going to get picked up for distribution, the idea of a one-night, one-city, one-show event was movie heaven.

The major downside to this new niche form of indie fest exhibition is hugely ironic however. Range Life and HMFF can draw crowds to be sure—but these crowds aren’t filled solely with the desired under-30 viewers. I’ll admit that the crowd at the HMFF opening night screening was made up of mostly older folks (the after party with free Dos Equis beer was another story). As highlighted in this Filmmaker Magazine article, the sad fact of the matter is young people aren’t flocking to film festivals (or art houses) like they used to. The article also goes on to ask the vital question: “What is the consequence of this disconnect between millennials - those aged 18 to 29 - and today's American indie cinema?”

It’s hard to say if indie cinema is losing cred simply on viewer demographic figures. Personally, I feel that the low turnout of twenty-somethings for new indie films is a result of a string of sub- or weaker material on the screen. But the question asked in the Filmmaker Magazine article is just the tip of the iceberg. Even if younger people eventually turn a new leaf and rediscover their generation’s seminal indie cinema scene, what incentive do they have that will propel them to wait in line at a film festival?

By now a festival like Sundance has outgrown its humble aim from the early 80s. When the fest’s lineup mainly boasts of Hollywood stars and their substantial projects, where does the indie factor go? Certainly not to comedy superstar Steve Carell and his Little Miss Sunshine vehicle. And viewers don’t need to fly to Sundance to get more Hollywood in their system. So could the niche traveling film fest (like HMFF & Range Life Entertainment) be an indie filmmaker’s haven? Will it be the main outlet to push their content?

Or will young filmmakers have to get as creative as the guy in the video below to get their work noticed by their peers?