Last Week

The Last Week
1. What has been the ongoing relationship between so-called mumblecore filmmakers and the South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin?
Matt Dentler, is the producer of the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival and is one of the main shakers of the Mumblecore movement. Under 30 filmmakers Kentucker Audley, Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg, Aaron Katz, Frank V. Ross, Mark and Jay Duplass, have contributed to each other's projects. They are the core elements of the festival in that they submit films to SXSW.

2. Broadly speaking, what characteristics define mumblecore?
Bad sound.
They are all associated with SXSW. Very non traditional filmmaking with non mainstream distribution concepts.
They are also very young filmmakers that know each other and shoot their movies with digital cameras. These are very cheap productions. They use whats available to make their movies, especially each other for whatever anyone can do, similar to film students in film school.
One quote is; “'These are films made cheaply about young white people talking to each other.' And of course it sounds excruciating.”

3. What have been the most common charges against mumblecore?
“The directors are all male middle-class Caucasians, and they make movies exclusively about young adults who are involved in heterosexual relationships and who have jobs (when they have them) in workplaces populated almost exclusively by SWMs and SWFs.”
They are very cheaply made with non-actors and are weird stories made on video.
"The media," Dentler said, "to a certain degree, couldn't help but say, 'What's going on here?' when some of the most unique American indies we're seeing right now on the festival circuit are coming from a bunch of friends, who A) none of them had received a conventional distribution deal, and B) they all live in separate parts of the country."

6. IFC Films picked up Hannah Takes the Stairs for “day-and-date” distribution. What does this mean?
Thru its First Take arm that’s the day-and-date of distribution; the film opens on IFC Center series and is available for download from IFC on Demand.

7. What is Ray Privett’s objection to Aaron Katz’s statement that the IFC Center is a “legitimizing force”? [See response posted at the bottom of the article.]
“I'm not convinced that is the best way to respond to art.”
“if legitimacy means disavowing works I love and in which I and others find value, I'd rather be a bastard. As I suppose I am.”
He's railing against the machine and elite snobs of the film world. Nothing can legitimize art. Art justifies itself.

10. Breakout talents according to Taubin:
“Bujalski and Katz, are breakout talents, and their differences are far more interesting than their similarities. Bujalski, whose Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation (05) is a subtle writer and a fine director of actors who understands how to stage a scene so that body language speaks as strongly as words.”
“Katz’s sound design is as expressive as both his cityscape images and his ambient-light close-ups of characters lost in their own heads or engaged in tentative tête-à-têtes.”