…And The Pursuit of Happiness

Louis Malle’s film …And The Pursuit of Happiness, is justly titled, as Louis Malle, a French Ex-Patriot who after years of traveling the world for filmmaking, becomes an American citizen.  After filming endless amounts of disjointed footage as Malle traveled across America for 3 months, it seems that the film is a connected collection of American vignettes, narrated by an immigrant, instead of a natural born citizen.

A main point at the beginning of the film is by a man known for his hand in starting the American Dream, however, Louis Malle quotes Thomas Jefferson with his worry for the future of immigrants, that immigration will turn the colonies into a  ”hetergenous, incoherent, distracted mass.”  With this quote in mind, the rest of the film displays immigration on both sides of the fence, with one side showing the “melting pot” as an empowering force of combined strengths from numerous cultures, and the other side being a massive display of conformity overpowering individual freedoms.  This is best displayed by a Cuban woman who couldn’t bring her daughter from Cuba, but brings a dog who follows commands in English, and not Spanish.  In an interview, the Cuban woman criticizes her hometown, and praises America for the ability to have “whatever you want.”  However, when Malle films the Cuban district of Miama, which he says “is Cuba,” other immigrants are more thankful for their ability to come from Cuba and be a part of the development of Miami.  

On the other side of the fence, Malle shows a Vietmanese police officer speaking to Vietmanese immigrants.  Malle seems to want to display immigrants bringing their culture from the home’s and installing it into the American psyche.  A student interviewed by Malle shows how immigrant students have a high demand for education, as one student has a choice between Columbia University and Princeton for Medical School.  The same student works in a family owned grocery store when not studying for college entrance exams.

As the vignettes continue, similar stories bounce immigration like a volleyball over a net.  Malle does an excellent job showing numerous opionion’s on the topic, and his narration as an immigrant seems to show a certain criticism for America, that is overwhelmed by the massive opportunities that America held in the early 1980’s.  One of the final scenes shows an Indian family who have a beautiful home in San Jose, California, but converted the barbeque pit into a small Hindu altar.  The family explains how easy life is in America, as owners of a few hotels, and soon a small bank.  However, some cultural differences do not change, as the parents explain the Indian family culture of the younger generations caring for the older generations.  

Personally, as someone who knows a person of Indian descent who is a first – generation American, and whose parents would have made perfect candidates for Malle’s film in the early 1980’s, it is interesting to see how different one generation in American can change the culture in ways that are unexpected.  The final scene shows a man trying to convince Malle that 1/3 of immigrants return home because their dreams are destroyed, which of course is impossible, because returning to a country is almost more difficult than coming to America in the first place.  However, the seemingly brainwashed man talk about the future of relations with Mexico, in which he describes the current situation with Mexico as if he could see into the future.

Trekkies

After the intensity of Capturing the Friedman’s, I decided to take in a documentary that was on the lighter side. It’s also something that I find completely interesting, considering I am a huge fan of this TV show. I decided to watch the 1996 “Trekkies,” a film by Roger Nygard. It is about the phenomenon of Star Trek and more notably than that, the mass amount of loyal fans of the show. I find the film to be extremely fascinating because I have been called a trekkie by some of my friends over the years, and as soon as they actually watch the show, they stop calling me that. They stop calling me that because they see that there is a lot more to the show, and that is something that Nygard, as the film maker, is trying to show through this documentary. The idea of Star Trek is much more than ‘Beam me up Scotty,” it is a completely optimistic view of the future, where race, color or gender are no longer economic factors.            

            Now, Nygard does show some of these fans that take it a bit too far, however Nygard’s also has personal interviews with these fans and shows us the audience that these are real people, and if you actually listen to what they would have to say, they don’t seem as crazy. His use of the personal interview, makes this documentary. The interviews are telling this story of these people and Star Trek. There is very little use of archival footage or scenes from the television show, it’s all about talking to these people and understanding why they are so enthusiastic about this show. One example from the film that really comes to my mind, is Barbara Allen. She is a woman from Arkansas who was summoned for jury duty. Seeing as how she considers herself a commanding officer of the U.S.S. Artumus,  the Little Rock chapter of the Federation Alliance, she wore her Star Trek uniform to the trial. This is about a 10 minute sequence of the film that Nygard really shines as an excellent filmmaker. There is a clip from CNN news and Inside Edition I believe, about how the ‘Star Trek Juror’ is rocking the court system of Little Rock. Everyday as this woman goes into and out of the court, the media is there trying to get as many pictures and ask as many questions as to why she is doing this, and she walks right on by. Now just by seeing this, it’s shown that she is a little crazy and maybe she should be on this jury. However, through the interview that Nygard conducts with Allen, we see that she really has a pretty decent and true point when you think about it. She states, “You can put on a uniform for baseball, basketball, football, anything for the big game and it’s alright. But as soon as someone puts on a Star Trek uniform, people get a case of the giggles. The ideas of Star Trek are going to be the blueprint for the 21^st century. I really love the portrayal of the world that Gene(the creator of trek) created for us in the future.” I would never walk around in a trek uniform, but if you think about it, she’s right. Some people like to be different through basketball, others, Star Trek. The way Nygard portrays her in this film through her interview, makes her point seem not crazy and that she really has something extremely positive to say. And Nygard does that with everyone that he talks to in the film. There is a dentist who turned his office in to ‘Starbase Dental,” and he and his family all wear the uniforms on a regular basis. People may think that’s dumb and think this guy is a geek, but Nygard speaks to him and makes him seem like a  regular person. He states, “There’s always a connotation that the dentist is….not a fun place, all we’re trying to do is change that.” Without that interview, he would seem like a bit of a geek, but he’s just a dentist trying to keep his business alive.

            Nygard’s portrayal of these people through the interviews, is also really pleasing and enjoyable to see as a viewer. This is one of the only documentaries I’ve seen where someone isn’t being portrayed in a negative way.  He makes of these people look like anyone one else and not peculiar in anyway. Brent Spiner, who plays Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation said in the film, “People perceive the fans as these off beat, peculiar kinds of people. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who wasn’t peculiar in someone, Star Trek fan or not.” Nygard even show that the casts think that these people are smart and just like any one else. I have my own opinions on whether or not I think they are weird, but that’s not the point. Nygard’s filmmaking makes me think they maybe they aren’t, and that’s the mark of any good documentary, it makes you think about things more deeply. Nygard accomplishes that very well.  

Taxi to the Dark Side

Dilawar, an Afghani taxi driver, was a footnote to court hearings concerning at least a half-dozen American soldiers and officers dealing with the torture of detainees during war.  A footnote, in so many cases, is a fact or an aside excluded from the body of an argument, but can often change the impact of the argument.  As one of the interviewees in Taxi to the Dark Side states, this footnote can be the Devil in the details.  The entire documentary deals with footnotes, forgotten bits of information.  Just as Dilawar was a footnote to the court martial of American soldiers who were just following orders, those soldiers, who detail much of the movie’s main story arc, were footnotes to a war that wasn’t concerned their stories.

The movie begins with landscape shots, beautiful and serene, that survey the pastures and crop fields of Afghanistan.  This was the landscape in which Dilawar was raised.  He was, according to his brother, a hardworking youngman, he laid a rock wall that served as a fence for his family’s peanut farm.  When Dilawar was no longer able to work in the fields he volunteered to drive a taxi between their small village and the larger metropolitan areas.  Dilawar never returned from one of his trips as a taxi-driver.  Dilawar died at the hands of American soldiers under strict orders to retrieve information from detainees concerning terrorist actions, but with no specific guidelines as to what, exactly, they were supposed to do.

Each of the soldiers and officers interviewed who were sentenced in the torture trials, are lit in Taxi to the Dark Side, by strong key light on a near-90 degree plane to his profile.  This casts half of the face in extreme shadow.  The lit half of the face is not blown out, but all of the features are very clear.  In the beginning of the piece, this lighting is very disorienting and raises huge questions as to the filmmaker’s attitude toward these subjects.  As the piece continues and interviews with attorneys, journalists, and politicians are presented (mostly with very flattering light) it becomes clear that the soldiers have always been in a half-light.  Certainly, the piece concedes, these men were capable of very grave things, they have a dark side.  However, because of torture policies that came strait from Rumsfeld (who made light of some torturous activity by saying that he often stood for longer durations than these detained men), the soldiers, on the frontlines were kept, at least, half in the dark to take the fall if anyone should be held accountable.  But, finally, the story was kept half in the dark.  These men had jobs, lives that were ruined because the presidential administration had already acquitted themselves of all fault.  These soldiers had been pushed to footnotes at the bottom of the proverbial page of history.

The movie spends most of its time on footnotes.  Presenting many facts in the center of a black frame preceded by an asterisk as a a B-roll cutaway.  Even as the movie employs famous footage of press-conferences, presidential speeches, and journalistic footage it will cut to a footnote describing the subtext of Colin Powell’s UN adress pushing for an invasion of Iraq.

The main story arc begins with Dilawar’s death in Bagram Air base in Afghanistan.  This story takes a back seat as those soldiers who had beaten him, interogated him, eventually, killed Dilawar, tell of how they had been ordered, non-specifically to brutalize this inmate. Their story goes to Abu Graib, Gauntanamo, the White House.  The taxi to which the title refers is a figurative ride that beigns at a minor footnote among thousands of pages and ends as a social and artistic indictment of a presidency, a war, an era.

Upon watching this piece I sat silent in the dark as the credits rolled past.  I had been familiar with much of the press on Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay, but still could not digest the experience of seeing this movie.  The insistence upon examing the minutae of facts and stories that had heretofore been overlooked, the presentation of soldiers as both perpetrators and victims and the insistence upon the guilt of a President that I personally did not like but still felt some civil duty to respect had been all but too much. I wanted a cleaner answer.  But, the movie told me that there wasn’t any.  I, personally, had to accept fault for the fate of Dilawar and so many others because of my apathy, my ignorance as to what my government was doing.  Certainly, I am not completely at fault, I was, after all, half in the dark.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride (2006)

Right off the bat I would like to say that this documentary was not picked off of our list. I was planning on doing another documentary, but I was in the Hunter S. Thompson mood. If you want more info on this documentary you can find it here.

This documentary is devoted to the life of Hunter S. Thompson and more specifically, the legend of the man. The film opens up with home footage of Thompson doing, well… Hunter S. Thompson sort of things; like shooting a home-made flame thrower and swimming with a Reagan mask on. The credits are spliced in between the home footage and a live drawing of the title on canvas.

The credits roll right into interviews with Thompson’s friends, family, and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. An interesting view of the interviews; they are only on half of the screen, as the other half is taken up by more footage of Thompson. The first interview you see on the screen is with Gary Busey, and it plays out as though Thompson himself wrote it. For those of you who do not know who Gary Busey is, he is a wildly entertaining (read that as crazy) actor. He refuses to do the interview the way Tom Thurman wants, but rather tries to script the way they begin the conversation, hilarity ensues.

After a slew of interviews with people who worked with Thompson, such as Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, there is a narrator who talks of the background on Thompson. Facts like where he lived, where he grew up, and who his family was were given in detail. All of this is done with a voice-over and pictures of Thompson, his family, and anything related to him.

The whole documentary is shot in the “floating head” technique; interviews spliced with b-roll shots. With entertaining celebrity interviews, as well as close friends giving valuable insight on Thompson, this is a documentary for anyone, as well as anyone who knows a little about Hunter S. Thompson.

- Tanner Johnson

Triumph of the Will

Steady-handed, considered, careful, clear-minded and manipulative are all adjectives that sometimes get lobbed at a dignified documentary taking on a heavy political subject.  As clouds hang below below the camera, shot through the propellor of the airplane, the viewer is taken on a scenic descent into the city of Nuremburgh.  Once below the cloud line, the city’s historic architechture is flown over and past.  The plane is eventually seen from the ground as it prepares for landing, flying among the stone cathedrals and castles built upon the proud German tradition.  It is not until the plane has been shown to be securely on the ground, propellors slowing, that the door opens and Adolf Hitler walks down the steps to the tarmac and a cheering mob.  All of those critical adjectives thrown at documentaries about contemporary politics can be applied to Triumph of the Will, an obviously biased documentary to educate and stir the German populace with the faces and doctrine of its government.

If Hitler’s descent upon the city of Nuremburgh was god-like, his parade through the streets is nothing short of Caesarian.  The not only the gathered crowds, but the sculptures of the city are shot from the motorcade to appear to be saluting the dictator.  Every shot evokes images of steadfastness and royalty.  In one speech, at night, Hitler is not only shown speaking to a crowd of 200,000 from atop a granite rock, but is shot so as to be a part of that rock.  The low angle shots are used to reinforce the power Hitler represents, and the high angle shots are to show the reach and impact of that power.  Lines of soldiers carrying shovels stretch beyond the reach of the camera, their number is only 53,000.  Soldiers are shown preparing for a formal parade inspection infront of Hitler, the wrestle and bathe, they pull and carry each other, as horses.  Shots show hitler on a podium, equal to a giant representation of the Nazi Eagle towering over a stadium.  Night shots are dramatically lit by fires and flares as a minor official speaks, the crowd becomes so impassioned that they are untrollable.

There is little in the way of spoken audio and no dialogue.  The soundtrack is carefully composed orchestral and military music to carry the viewer between locales and events.  This one way exchange of ideas is both telling and disturbing.  Not only did the hundreds of thousands of Germans gathered in Nuremburgh for this convention buy into the charisma of Hitler and his ideals, but so did millions of other Germans and Europeans.

Though Triumph of the Will at 2 hours is test of patience to contemporary viewers (such as myself), it serves as warning against getting carried away by a charismatic politician and as a testiment to the power of persausion that film- and video-making hold.

Lessons of Darkness

Today I would like to try something different.  Instead of discussing some of the things I find interesting in the movie as  a whole, I would instead like to look at one sequence specifically.  Towards the end of Lessons of Darkness is a chapter titled “Life Without Fire.”  While I love the whole movie it is always this scene that really gets under my skin.  The scene starts with two fireman standing in front of a stream of oil shooting into the sky.  Previously we had watched the firemen putting out the oil fires but now they throw a torch into the stream and restart the fires.  Over this Werner Herzog states in his voiceover “Two figures are approaching the oil well.  One of them holds a lighted torch.  What are they up to?  Are they going to rekindle the blaze?  Has life without fire become unbearable for them?  Others seized by madness follow suit.  Now they are content.  Now there’s something to extinguish again.”  By presenting this sequence, as well as the rest of the movie, as being somehow alien I think Herzog really creates something magical here.  Most documentaries strive for some kind of objective view but here Herzog clearly plays with the material to heighten certain aspects.  In this scene and in some others this causes what I feel is the main theme of the movie to really be present.  The film seems to be trying to show us just how absurd humankind can really be and more specifically how absurd war is.  If he had chosen to do this in a more straight forward way it would not have had the same impact.  While the images are often striking they are not too far from other footage we saw on the news.  However when those images are shown to us in the context that has been set up of an outsider looking in it almost forces us to reexamine what we are looking at.  This is where I feel the film’s power lays.  We know that the fireman cant possibly be setting the fires again because they want something to extinguish.  Still this premise brings into question just what we do know or think about what is being shown.  In truth Herzog later said that the real reason they relit the fires was that the oil was starting to pool near an already lit area and they started this relatively small fire to avoid a larger one.  In the end though it doesn’t matter.  The truth of what Herzog is trying to convey seems somehow more resonant than the truth of reality.  But is this a documentary then?  I’m really not sure.  The best answer I could give right now is that maybe it doesn’t really matter so much if it is or isn’t

Here is a video clip I made of the scene.

The Flying Doctors of East Africa – Werner Herzog

Herzog
The Flying Doctors of East Africa

Woven throughout the film are bits of an interview filmed in an airplane, flying over the mountainous African terrain. The camera is positioned behind the subjects, which creates a good vantage point for the audience; we are able to see the speakers while simultaneously being able to see out the window. This might be something to keep in mind while filming for this class, some of us might be filing in a car or van or maybe even a motor-scooter.

Occasionally the frame is straight out the window of the plane — I would imagine that these shots were filmed while the pilot and doctors were preoccupied by other (more pressing matters; such as flying the plane or arranging medical supplies, etc.) Most likely all of us will encounter times when it is inappropriate to film, either out of respect to the subject, or because it is irrelevant to the film — Regardless; this is a great time to capture some ‘b-roll’ (I think its called) film the atmosphere of the film, the environment.

Back on land, there was a back and forth between interviews with the doctors, and inside the makeshift hospitals and medical clinics. I was shocked to see the film take us INSIDE the operation room; blood and guts and everything, and not even the Hollywood versions, the real guts. After a moment I realized though, this is Africa in 1969, so the legalities are probably much different than we expect in current-day America.

The glue of the film I suppose the narrator — the film could still be coherent without the narrator, but in this case the narrator provide us with information, story and explanation of the circumstances, which in a way, makes the film more powerful.

Capturing The Friedmens

For my next documentary viewing, I decided to get out of the music realm, of which I am most comfortable with. I decided that I needed to watch something a little different than what I have chosen in the past. I went with a documentary that I’ve never seen, but heard about a lot and have also wanted to watch, Capturing the Friedmens. This is a film that was made in 2003 by Andrew Jarecki. The film is about what seems to be a normal family from Great Neck, New York. There’s Arnold, an award winning school teacher, Elaine, a stay at home mother and their children Seth, David and Jesse. The family is shattered however on one Thanksgiving; in I believe 1986, when the Great Neck Police barge into their home. They have a warrant to search the house because they have evidence that Arnold has been involved with child pornography. It turns out that it is much deeper problem than that though; children of Arnold’s private computer class have come forward to accuse him and his son Jesse of sexual abuse. The film tells the story of the arrest, trail and very bizarre circumstances of Arnold and Jesse’s case.
The case of the Friedmens was a very strange one and held together with very loose claims and shaky evidence. The children of his class were aged from about 8 to 12 and never said a word to their parents about what happened and had no physical evidence of abuse. I believe that once the police searched his house and found piles of magazines that were all child pornography related, they decided to go after this guy. After all he was a teacher and has been around kids all his life. In the film, many of his computer students are interviewed and in one of them, a student named Ron Georgalis, comments about how he was listening to the investigators tell his parents what had happened to him in the class, and he said he was horrified. He doesn’t remember anything of the sort or anything resembling abuse in the class. But detective Frances Galasso says in the film, that there were over 100 different counts of sexual abuse charges against Arnold and Jesse.
What I found fascinating about the way Jarecki made this documentary is that it’s made in a completely neutral tone and is simply telling the story of what happened. Jarecki offers both sides of the case and never favors one or the other. The Friedmens and the officials, police, layers etc., seem to have equal time on the screen during this film. Jarecki offers the other side to what a person is saying immediately . For example, when dealing with Jesse’s case, the family had hired Peter Panaro to be his lawyer. In the film, Panaro states that Jesse wanted to plead guilty because it would be easier on his mother and Panaro said that he wouldn’t allow him to do this. Panaro says, “I don’t work out deals for people aren’t innocent guilty, your not guilty,” which then leads to Panaro saying that Jesse admitted that he was abused by his father as well, with tears in his eyes. Now, Jesse responds to this, he says that it was Panaro who was convinced that Arnold abused his son and that it would look good to the judge and help Jesse if he too was a victim. Both sides have been given and neither of them have been cut off or portrayed different than the other. This ultimately leads to confusion as a viewer, whose telling the truth and Jarecki offers absolutely no opinion and no resolution. the viewer must decide for themselves what they believe. This is something that I have never seen before in a documentary like this. Usually, these types of documentaries are made to tell the truth and get the truth out there, this is not that way at all. It was a conscious choice by the director, to make this simply information and just tell the story of what this case was all about.

American Movie

American Movie documents filmmaker Mark Borchardt as he endeavors to complete two of his films. It tries to capture the spirit of Mark and the environment he comes from. It shows his perseverance and dedication to his filmmaking despite problems with funding, organization, and personal demons such as alcohol abuse.

It seems clear that Mark’s character is real, however it is difficult to figure out just how much control the filmmakers had over the film and the way he was presented. Often it seems that they might have staged or planned some of the shots. For instance, when Mark’s friend Mike tells him that he has twenty dollars, Mark suggests that they go buy beer with it. When Mike tells him that he doesn’t want to buy any beer Mark says he doesn’t either, but he would be willing to drink some. There seem to be instances in the film where a certain wittiness is detected that seems based on Mark’s character, but it is difficult to tell if any of it is planned out ahead of time. Or at least it seems possible that a few things were prepared beforehand to fit into the natural dialogue. It also seems likely that because Mark is a filmmaker he might be more willing and able to fake characteristics and idiosyncrasies for the sake of the film, even if they are based on real things he has said or might say. Even if the filmmakers did not stage any events it seems that some of them might have been inspired by the camera being there. In one instance Mark decides to give his drunken uncle a bath, which provides for some interesting comedic effects. But it is hard to tell if this would happen naturally or if it was inspired by the camera’s presence.

However, most of the film seems as though it is derived from long and patient shoots of Mark in his environment. It feels as though they followed Mark around a lot and filmed him do nearly everything. And when they captured something of interest they kept it, this is why much of the film is made up of short quick clips, often as the cast and crew are on their way to an event relevant to the story. For example, when the film documents Mark at his job at the cemetery it appears as though they filmed him extensively throughout his day. He might have something relevant to say while doing one thing, and then the next second he will be talking about something else while doing something completely different, however the ideas will be linked. This way they create a coherent portrait of Marks character while representing his wisdom in a way that makes sense, even though it is not exactly the way he originally said it. Also from following him around they create opportunities for good b-roll, such as when he is vacuuming and he accidentally tosses the vacuum cord on the flowers of someone’s grave. This provides a break from the interview style and allows the viewer to view a subtlety of the frustrations he deals with at work, however it is a moment that must be patiently hunted for by the filmmakers.

American Movie demonstrates a kind of cinema verte style but also shows the amount of control the filmmaker can have over a final product even if they are just letting events unfold before the camera. They could have taken footage of Mark and his endeavors and used it to make a mockery of him and his friends and families. By taking so much footage they had a lot of freedom over the way they put it together and the way they portrayed Mark. While they not hesitate to show the full quirkiness of mark and his friends and family, they portrayed him as an honorable and intelligent man (although not always intelligent sounding) who was not satisfied with mediocrity and had an extreme dedication and passion to filmmaking.

Joe Steigerwald

Independent Film Article

Here is the article I mentioned in class last Friday discussing the current status of independent cinema.    

-Quinn Hester

 

August 31, 2008  Dark Plight     Indie films coming under siege from many directions  Author: DUANE DUDEK; Journal Sentinel film critic  Edition: Final Section: E Cue Page: 01   Article Text:  We all know what an independent film looks like.  They are modestly made and intensely personal. Hundreds are released each year, and countless more are made.  But if no one sees them, do they really exist? This is less a rhetorical cliché than a way of introducing the sad fact that Milwaukeeans haven’t seen many of them lately.  These are dark days for those who want to experience films’ ability to challenge, provoke, stimulate, depress or enlighten, with a like-minded audience in a communal atmosphere. There is a retrenchment in the distribution and exhibition of such films nationwide. And the locally tangible evidence of that retrenchment includes a canceled fall film festival and the marquee at Milwaukee’s premiere art house, the Oriental Landmark, advertising blockbusters.  The indie film movement is bleeding from a thousand cuts, and one of them is from “The Dark Knight,” with the budget and box office of a blockbuster but the complex and ambiguous qualities of art-house fare. Mainstream films such as “Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and “Pineapple Express” were embedded with an indie sensibility by filmmakers from that world.  But if blockbusters can provide our minimum daily requirement of brain food, what do audiences need indie films for?  Below we examine what is wrong with the indie film business model and what can be done to fix it, from a prism of perspectives.  The Art-House Exhibitor Ted Mundorff, CEO of Landmark Theaters  Landmark has five screens in Milwaukee — three at the Oriental and two at the Downer Theatre — and playing “Dark Knight” and “Mamma Mia!” wasn’t their first time at the blockbuster rodeo. In the past, Landmark theaters played “Spider-Man” and the “Star War” reissues.  But this year, the indie films they might have normally played “just weren’t compelling enough,” Mundorff said. “We’re a 365-day business. So . . . when there’s lack of product, we will reach out and select movies that we can play.”  But just because they are also blockbusters, he said, “does not indicate we’re going away from indie film; it indicates that indie film isn’t there.”  Indie films are a dime a dozen, but successful ones are few and far between. And since distributors do not spend money here to market a film that has failed elsewhere, they wither and die before they reach us. Theaters “do not participate” in this decision but cannot afford to resist it, Mundorff said.  “We are a tool of the distributor,” said Mundorff. “When a film opens up in New York and Los Angeles and doesn’t perform, smaller markets suffer. The history of a movie will tell us what it’s going to do in different markets.”  Audiences, he said, “will not come in Milwaukee if they do not come in Denver. We know this. It’s historical.”  The Studio Chief Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics  Smart summer films like “The Dark Knight” are the bane of indie films.  “The stupider the better,” said Bernard. “When they’re stupid, we do great.”  Sony Pictures Classics, a specialty division of Sony, makes about 40% of its own films, like “Rachel Getting Married,” the new Jonathan Demme film premiering in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, and buys the rest, like the animated Israeli film “Waltz With Bashir.”  Analyzing the current indie film malaise, Bernard lamented the failure of exhibitors like Landmark to program and promote films for individual cities, and he called the DVD rental service Netflix “the most influential film critic in the country right now” because it recommends things to see based on previous rentals.  Still, Bernard believes the indie downturn is temporary and cyclical.  Until recently, specialty divisions associated with major studios kept indie products out of the hands of smaller companies. But now that a lot of these divisions have been shuttered or are in distress, he said, “you’ll see this new crop of smaller companies cropping up” to bring a new generation of independent film to the marketplace.  “And they’ll go on for a while. And then something new will happen. And then,” said Bernard, “there will be a new metamorphosis.”  The Film Festival Director Piers Handling, director of the Toronto International Film Festival  Toronto has one of the three top film festivals in the world, along with Cannes and Sundance. And this year, Handling said, it has a “strong cross-section of international work,” especially from countries with a “cultural policy” of subsidizing national cinemas.  By comparison, the free market system in the United States favors blockbusters that “pay the bills” and whose “marketing budgets are enormous.” In such an environment, Handling said, “it’s increasingly difficult for indie filmmakers to get their work out there and have it sustained. Word of mouth . . . doesn’t exist anymore. The days when you could keep a film four or five weeks and have it build are over and numbered.”  Instead, Handling said, an event mentality “has taken over the culture generally. Unless you have a mass event . . . like a football game, it’s really hard to create space and awareness for your activities, especially if they are small and artistic in nature.”  But film festivals are such an event, and Handling believes they have basically usurped art-house theaters as an “outlet for many films trying to penetrate the marketplace.” During a festival, he said, people “immerse themselves, gorge themselves” on foreign, alternative and independent film, after which “they are caught up.” And then they tune out until the following year’s festival.  The Box-Office Guru Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers  The immigration drama “The Visitor” grossed less than $10 million this summer. But those are blockbuster numbers for an indie film, said Dergarabedian, who tracks box-office data. “That movie started out strong and never slowed down,” he said.  But while a few indie films do well, most don’t, Dergarabedian added.  “Releasing a specialized film and nurturing it is a delicate science,” he said. Such films are “not cost-effective unless you can get a breakout hit.”  And that can depend on reviews. “In the blockbuster world, movies are review-proof. In the indie world, they are review-dependent,” he said.  Newspapers’ cutting back on reviews “is not a good thing for the indie world,” Dergarabedian said. “That might be the X factor. The audiences that gravitate toward them want a respected critic to say it’s a good film before they go out.”  The Filmmaker Randall Miller, director of “Bottle Shock”  Miller and his wife and co-writer, Jody Savin, mortgaged their house to finance their first movie, “Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School,” and they were “really optimistic” when they took it to the Sundance Film Festival.  “We had a great cast and an amazing audience response. And we got one of those small deals” to distribute the film, Miller said.  The movie still hasn’t made money.  “Which is sad because it was not a very expensive movie,” he said. “It should have paid itself back, and it didn’t. That’s what drove us to this point.”  So, for their wine-country film “Bottle Shock,” they are distributing it by themselves. A studio, Miller said, would have tacked on a 25% marketing fee, “so dollar one comes in with 25% off the top.” Plus, there are fees for marketing “which you can’t control” and interest.  “And so when you start to do the math . . . you see there’s very little chance that you’re going to get your money back,” Miller said. “It’s worse than any other business in that way. You take out a bank loan for any kind of business and once you pay them off . . . you don’t have to keep paying them.”  Distributing the film themselves lets Miller and Savin see what the cost is. And they can make money “because the profits are in home video,” Miller said.  He compared it to the way Clint Eastwood made “Dirty Harry.”  “The distribution model is really clean,” he said. “It’s like direct receipts. Whatever it makes comes back to the production company.”  The Alternative Distribution Mogul Adley Gartenstein, president of Film Movement  A great indie film makes Gartenstein feel “that I’m seeing a work of art. That there’s a reason this movie was made. And that my life is better because of it.”  You wouldn’t think there were many films like that in the world, but the Film Movement movie of the month club — at www.filmmovement.com — has 72 of them in its library.  Gartenstein picks up exclusive rights to mostly foreign-language films that are simultaneously released in theaters and made available on DVD to club members six months to a year before they are released to the public. Subscribers “don’t select it,” he said. “They don’t have to go to Netflix to pick it out. It’s programmed for them by the world’s top film festivals.”  Recent films included “Days and Clouds” from Italy, “The Violin” from Mexico and “The Grocer’s Son” from France.  “Our business is not dependent on having a smash opening weekend,” Gartenstein said. “We buy a movie and put our resources behind it for the life of the film.”  He described the club as “the Miramax of the 1980s . . . when you knew if Miramax was associated with it, it would be a quality movie.”  The Artistic Director Jonathan Jackson, Film Milwaukee  The new group Film Milwaukee is not only devoted to “creating a great film festival here” in 2009, but to “making a significant impact on the Milwaukee community with year-round” screenings and educational programs, Jackson said.  “I think we’ll be a significant cultural entity in a couple years,” said Jackson, who held the same position at the late Milwaukee International Film Festival.  The “art of independent film . . . is as interesting as it’s ever been,” he said. But marketing a film “by a director people never heard of or with cast members nobody knows . . . takes a community-based, locally driven” plan, which distributors and exhibitors do not provide. “It’s on individual theaters to develop their marketplace,” he said.  One venue that does is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Union Theatre, of which Jackson was once director.  “It is the only truly alternative art-house cinema in Milwaukee,” and the school “owes it to the UWM community and the community at large to fund” the program, “with a full-time staff person and a marketing director,” Jackson said, because “the audience is there.”  The Commercial Theater Chain Bruce J. Olson, president of Marcus Theatres  The Milwaukee-based Marcus chain, which owns or operates 678 screens at 56 locations in six states, is the seventh-largest theater circuit in the nation. And while mainstream films are the core of the chain’s business, Marcus “has an interest in supporting” Film Milwaukee’s plans to develop a new festival here.  “And someday we’ll have a downtown theater and hopefully that will be a centerpiece of the film festival,” Olson said. “It’s going to take some time, but I think it’s good for the city. It’s good for our image. And it’s good for creativity. A city this size should have a film festival.”  Olson, whose area theaters show art-house fare under a “critic’s choice” banner, feels indie film, too, will rise again.  “Just when we think there (are no more) indie movies, there will be another one that comes along. We don’t know what it is yet, but it will come along.  “Art,” he predicted, “will make a comeback.”  JSOnline.com Follow Journal Sentinel film critic Duane Dudek’s coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival, which starts Thursday, and all other things cinema, on his blog, Dudek on Film: blogs.jsonline.com/dudek/.  E-mail: ddudek@journalsentinel.com  Copyright 2008, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)    Copyright, 2008, Journal Sentinel, All Rights Reserved. Record Number: MERLIN_14187097