Mumble Mumble
Brits reading this blog might not be familiar with the group of super-indie US filmmakers who have been labelled with the “Mumblecore” moniker. I wrote about this right after SXSW this year when everybody there was buzzing, or rather mumbling, about Joe Swanberg and a few other filmmakers who have been doing the festival circuit with him. As this recent Filmmaker Magazine article illustrates, the origins of Mumblecore can actually be traced back to SXSW 2005 when the Duplass Brothers’ The Puffy Chair, Arin Crumley’s and Susan Buice’s Four Eyed Monsters, Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha, and Swanberg’s first film Kissing on the Mouth all screened. It’s inspiring stuff for filmmakers taking the low-budget DIY route and the role of the internet in forging new creative partnerships and creating audiences who can then track these films down is interesting too. Whether all the twenty-something naval gazing is your cup of tea is another matter altogether but it’s also important not to lump all the filmmakers together – their work is far more varied in style and subject matter than the notion of a “movement” may suggest.
Greta Gerwig in Hannah Takes The Stairs