LIVE FROM MEMPHIS

I don't think it's too early to say that Indie Memphis 09 is shaping up to the best festival ever. It's even better than 2004, which is the year my movie Automusik Can Do No Wrong won! Here's a quick rundown on what I've been able to catch so far:

^{Producer Vaughn Smith and photographer Robert King}

Shooting Robert King

Historically, documentaries do not get an opening night slot at Indie Memphis. I think festival director Erik Jambor made an excellent decision running this one, which won the coveted Ron Tibbets Excellence in Filmmaking Award, opposite narrative feature winner That Evening Sun. The chronicle of the career of Memphis-based war photographer Robert King could have been a standard-issue catalog of atrocity and tragedy. Instead, thanks to the fact that producer Vaughn Smith kept in touch with King after meeting him in Sarajevo in 1992, it is simulataneously a tour of the last two decades of low- and high-level warfare around the globe and an engaging character study stretching over King's entire career. King does not flinch from opening up about the toll his profession has taken on his life and psyche, and yet he still manages to maintain his independence and do the important work of bringing images from the battlefield home. The after-screening Q & A on Thursday night not only shed light on how attitudes have changed toward the press over the last 20 years, both from an economic and political perspective, but also what it feels like to get the crap beaten out of you with your own camera. The producers are trying to sell this documentary to American TV, so hopefully a much wider audience will get to see this terrific documentary in the future.

Naturally Obsessed

I was very pleasantly surprised by the huge crowd which turned out for Naturally Obsessed, a film created by a husband and wife team of retired research scientists about, well, being an aspiring research scientist. If that's not box office poison, then why won't Jerry Bruckhiemer take my calls? Nevertheless, this fairly by-the-numbers documentary was very engaging, mostly on the strength of the personalities of the three graduate students it follows through the tedium and excitement of doing science for a living. Who would have thought the ins and outs of x-ray crystallography would be so interesting? So much of these aspiring scientists' work lives are given over to what are essentially crap shoots: if this experiment produces results this time, unlike what has happened daily for the last two years, my life's work will be vindicated and I"ll have a career and get paid. Dreams are fleeting, personal lives left in tatters, but science marches on. A great documentary debut. 

Although I was doing festival work during the 10 PM Friday slot, I was on the Indie Memphis screening committee and saw all three of the excellent narrative films that screened at that time several months ago. 

A+D

Amber Sealy's debut feature is a hyper-realistic and rather harrowing look at the rise and fall of a relationship. Sealy plays Alice, an artist who drops her life in Los Angeles to live in London with her new boyfriend Dan. But the romantic dream slowly turns sour. Dan still has his life in London, while Alice half-heartedly looks for work and tries to devote herself to Dan (Anton Saunders). She finds that the longer you look at something (or someone), the uglier they become, and the high romance gives way to tension, fights, and the awful, confusing feeling that something has changed in a relationship, but neither party knows what happened or how to fix it. The movie lives on the excellent, unmannered performances of Sealy and Saunders and Gabriel Fleming's expert editing.

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

Like Repo Man with janitors, Little Dizzle appears on its surface to be a movie about an ignored profession but is, in fact, an insightful comedy about the obsessions and paranoias of its age. The director David Russo has a background in short film and computer animation, and his first film is both episodic and packed with psychedelic sequence. This dizzying romps strengths are also its weaknesses: there is so much going on and many directions explored and abandoned that it doesn't quite coalesce into a cohesive whole. But while the souffle doesn't quite rise as high as I wanted it to, it's still a cool and funny picture well worth the cultist viewers' time. I look forward to seeing what Russo does next. 

Living Dark: The Story of Ted the Caver

OK, so I'm not much of a horror guy. I loved movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing when I was a teenager and beyond, but I was never obsessed with the genre the way so many filmmakers and audiences are. This made-in-Arkansas feature takes a legend from the early days of the Internet and turns it into a fairly by-the-numbers, don't-show-the-shark-until-the-third-act suspense/horror film. The craftsmanship on display here is top-notch, and caves are scary by themselves and even scarier when inhabited by a humanoid creature which apparently eats fear and drives its victims into suicidal insanity. But for me, Living Dark is a work more to be admired than loved. 

Saturday was packed with greatness that you could have picked a program at random and odds are you would have been satisfied with what you saw.

It Was Great, But I Was Ready to Come Home

Mumblecore (a term which I found out from the directors themselves that even the foremost practitioners of the genre despise) is first and foremost a reaction against the post-Star Wars emphasis on plot above all else. This genre (which could have been called American Neo-Realism or DIY or any damned thing except Mumblecore with just sounds ugly) has a reputation as "movies in which nothing happens", but the best examples develop plots about the dramas of everyday life almost despite themselves. It Was Great... depends on characterization and setting as two friends troop across Costa Rica from surf town to jungle park in a strangely joyless vacation. Director Kris Swanberg says the movie is about the intensity of female relationships, which is certainly true, but it mostly made me want to learn to surf. 

Wheedle's Groove

Unless you're Earl Morris, a documentary is only as strong as its subject. Wheedle's Groove had an incredibly infectious soundtrack of obscure soul from Seattle's 60s and 70s scene, which included such unlikely players as Kenny G. It's entirely appropriate that the film had its premiere in Memphis, as the story of excellent musicians who find it impossible to break out of regional success is a story that has played out here time and time again. Even though the music itself owed more to Motown than to Stax, I now feel a kinship to the Seattle music scene that goes deeper than Nirvana and Sir Mix A Lot. This movie made me eager to see what Seattle's version of $5 Cover is going to look like. 

Live from Memphis Music Video Showcase

I could discuss this program at great length, but I won't. All I'm going to say is, if there are any Memphis musicians reading this, there is no excuse not to seek out folks like LFM"s own Sarah Fleming, Chris Reyes and Brad Phalen; my own wife Laura Jean Hocking; the incredibly talented Angel Ortez, or the technically gifted Waheed AlQwasami, or veterans such as Eric Swartz and Mike McCarthy and bug them until they make a video for you. People, we've got world-class music and world-class music video directors in this town! Let's get them together! The showcase had 20 videos in it in and lacked many of our best acts. It's the golden age of music videos, and everybody needs to get with the program!

^{Tipper Newton and Cory McAbee}

The American Astronaut 

Festival director Erik Jambor says that the Indie Memphis experience should be about discovery. Well, mission accomplished. I can't say enough about the audacity, genius, and artistic vision of Cory McAbee's The American Astronaut. Have you ever seen a work that makes your work feel timid and unambitious? After viewing this science fiction musical...whatever the hell it is, I felt liberated and empowered to take more chances in my own films. I don't even really know how to describe it. It's like Orson Welles directed The Rocky Horror Picture Show after watching Eraserhead. These days, I don't really believe in the auteur theory very much any more, but the genius of McAbee is a data point in the other direction. This film was such a high-wire act that if any one of the dozens of elements failed, the whole edifice would have come tumbling down. Instead, it soared. Seek this movie out. 

Much more to come.