Watching Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs made me think of E. M. Forster. This particular passage from Howards End to be precise:

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

The film struck me as a very genuine attempt to explore all the fumbling and inarticulateness that often accompanies our attempts to connect with other people in a real and meaningful way. If you forget all the Mumblecore hype as you settle into your cinema seat it is a pleasure to enjoy the movie on this level. It was a pleasure for me at least. Sure a lot of it feels frustratingly stunted and insular, but so does my life sometimes! There is also a warmth and freshness to the improvised performances that I found quite exhilarating.

Speaking of connections, AJ Schnack has written a great piece about how documentary filmmakers can learn a lot from the collaborative methods of Swanberg and his friends:

[P]erhaps the biggest thing that we should learn from these filmmakers is that we can and should work together. And I mean that literally. Although the doc community is a pretty tight-knit bunch, we should continue to find ways of collaboration, on screen and off. We should find new ways to build a truly interconnected community.

One of the things I love about Shooting People is hearing the amazing stories of collaboration among Shooters. This is more important than ever as the rules and possibilities of filmmaking and distribution change. Filmmakers have got to be savvy about so many different aspects of the biz now - but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time if you can learn from and utilize each others knowledge and experience.

For some background on Mumblecore, The Reeler has a comprehensive article about its genesis (which also covers the ambivalence and uneasiness filmmakers often feel when they are pigeonholed in a movement).

Finally here’s SXSW’s Matt Dentler taking the stairs at the party that launched The New Talkies: Generation DIY last week. It was a lot of fun and nobody who was at the after party will be able to forget THE GIRL IN THE POLKA DOT DRESS!

If you want to find out what the Shooting People reprobates are up to in Edinburgh make sure you check out the Festival Focus blog. There you’ll find lots of film reviews, photos, and reports on various Shooting People activities. Lee Kern is showing a film called Monkey Tennis at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it!) that I’m sure will be worth attending because he’s always brilliantly funny:

MONKEY TENNIS!

In 2007 my partner and i went undercover with a secret camera to discover the guts and innards of the commissioning process. We managed to get meetings with the Heads of Entertainment at ITV and Channel 4. I proceeded to pitch my shit and ludicrous program ideas to see if i had a shot at the big time. This film shows the results of those meetings…

I’m watching Superbad!

I’m a bit of a fan of everything Judd Apatow and his gang get their dirty little paws on after seeing the funny and unexpectedly sweet Knocked Up. Superbad did not disappoint. The crazy cop antics got a little tiresome after a while, mainly because Cera and Hill are so hilarious that I wanted them on screen ALL the time, but all in all Superbad is just supergood. Here’s the R rated trailer for all you grown ups:

I went to my very first Improv Everywhere (causing “scenes of chaos and joy in public places”) on Saturday. It’s very good for uptight semi-British people like myself to run around New York giving total strangers hi-fives and making human dart boards. I highly recommend it.

I haven’t been following the story of the closing of the Google Video store very closely but Stu, the Shooting People tech guru who knows far more than me about these sorts of things, sent me a link to this story on arstechnica. Apparently people who downloaded films to rent or own will no longer be able to watch them because of DRM issues, and instead of a full refund, they will receive a poxy credit to Google Checkout.

DRM looks like an acronym for shite customer service if you ask me.

This is just another heads up that the Generation DIY series starts at the IFC Center on Wednesday for all of you who are just itching to find out what the hell this darn mumblecore nonsense is all about.

And the lovely IndieWIRE gang are doing a special event at the Apple Store on Thursday to tie in with the series. Here’s the info:

An Evening with Generation DIY:
Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Katz and Aaron Hillis at Apple
Store SoHo

WHEN: Thursday, August 23th, 7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m
WHERE: Apple Store - SoHo, 103 Prince Street, NYC
COST: Free, No RSVP required. Seats are first come, first serve.
Seating is limited.

Sometimes coined “mumblecore,” a new group of young filmmakers has
emerged on the film festival circuit in the past few years. Embracing
intimate stories, low budget shooting techniques, improvised
dialogue, and untrained actors, these films fall far outside the
studio system and instead rely on a core group of collaborators to
tell achingly real stories about twenty-somethings and their work,
love and play.

To coincide with the IFC Center’s film series “The New Talkies:
Generation DIY,” Wednesday, August 22 -Tuesday, September 4,
indieWIRE is pleased to present: Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the
Stairs, LOL), Aaron Katz, (”Dance Party USA, Quiet City), Greta
Gerwig, (Hannah Takes The Stairs), and Aaron Hillis (Fish Kill
Flea) , who will participate in a moderated discussion about
filmmaking, their similar styles and differences, and the definition
of “independent.”

I went to see Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa at the Walter Reade Theater yesterday despite still feeling bizarrely jetlagged and was so glad I did. Thanks to Jesse and Agnes for convincing me! I first saw a rough cut of the film at DocuClub a while back and it has come such a long way since then. The doc is about the misfits, veterans, runaways and renegades who live on a patch of desert in New Mexico - entirely off the grid. That means no water, no electricity and no proper roads. Many of the residents are military vets, clearly scarred by their war experience, many suffering from PTSD, but still fiercely patriotic (at least when it comes to the Constitution, they have nothing but contempt for the government). The thing that struck me about so many of the people in the film is how amazingly lucid and eloquent they are. I guess some of this results from the poetic language that often goes hand in hand with mental illness but I’m sure it is also something that comes from living in the middle of nowhere and having plenty of time to stare at the big sky in stillness, with no TV, commutes or people to avoid in the street. It brings a sort of quiet intensity - until they get blindingly drunk and start setting fire to cars that is!
The film looks beautiful - as co-director Randy Stulberg mentioned during the Q&A last night, the place looks like Mad Max, post-apocalyptic and coolly dangerous. It is interesting and hardly surprising that the people who end up seeking refuge there are the people who are so often severely let down by American society: vets, single mothers and abused children. I loved how one of the elders, an ex-psychiatric nurse, talked about the need for “mama energy” to resolve differences in the community. And then there’s Stan the pig farmer. This man, with his floppy felt hat and bushy beard, is so lovely and wise that I was moved to tears every time he spoke.

You can catch Off the Grid at the IFC Center on Tuesday.

And joy of joys! The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters opens at the IFC Center today! You have to see this film. I was sceptical when I sat down to watch it at Tribeca - I just didn’t know what a documentary about washed up Donkey Kong players was going to do for me. But I was soon cheering and booing the characters like it was a British Christmas pantomime, and crying with laughter throughout. The scene with the “baddie” blow-drying his hair to “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen is one of my favorite documentary scenes ever.

Here’s what The New Yorker says:

“Fascinating! Populated with snivelling acolytes, understanding wives, and Machiavellian twists and turns, [it] plays like a great Christopher Guest mockumentary, revelling in the deadpan entertainment of the obsessed.”

And don’t forget that the fantastic Manda Bala also opens tonight at the Angelika. So many films to watch at the moment, it’s very exciting.

Oh dear - nothing for weeks and then I just can’t stop the posts coming! There are some great film events coming up though that I feel I must share.

Manda Bala is opening at the Angelika tomorrow - this intense and beautifully made documentary about Brazil was a favorite of mine at Sundance earlier this year and I’m really looking forward to seeing it again, outside of the film fest bubble.

And then next week The New Talkies: Generation DIY comes to the IFC Center. If you read Matt Dentler’s blog you’ll know all about this series - it features many SXSW alumni and includes the theatrical openings of Hannah Takes the Stairs and Quiet City, both of which I was sorry to miss at SXSW so I am very excited about finally getting to see them. Speaking of SXSW, you can sign up for the SXSW News Reel on their website and get a daily email dose of film news, including lots of links to blogs, articles and online videos.

Finally, Jeremy and Randy Stulberg’s Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa is playing tonight at the Lincoln Center and then again on Tuesday at the IFC Center as part of the Slamdance Documentary Showcase. I have only seen a rough cut of this film so it’s definitely time to see the finished product.

With changes in technology allowing for cheaper production and distribution than ever before, short films are exploding. But how do you get the damn thing funded? And how do you know which distribution options are legit? The new Shooting People book on short film is hot off the press to help you maneuver through the creativity and confusion of the new shorts landscape. The book is called Get Your Short Film Funded, Made and Seen and it will help you do just that. Editor Tricia Tuttle has done an amazing job creating a directory of contacts, as well as compiling interviews with filmmakers, funders and distributors. The focus of the book does tend towards Europe - but I conducted some US interviews to give a sense of what is happening this side of the pond so there are also interviews with people like Matt Dentler from SXSW, Trevor Groth from Sundance, Jason Meil from Curent TV, and Brent Hoff from Wholphin.

You can download the first chapter for free here:

shootingpeople.org/shortsbook

The Shooters gang are all up in Edinburgh for the film festival there at the moment. There is a limit to how much time I can spend on the road (unfortunately!) so I can’t be there this year. But you can follow the adventures of Shooting People on the Festival Focus blog and on Ben’s Blog - Ben is currently developing a feature project and has written lots of brilliant entries that I’m sure other filmmakers will identify with. He’s also a much better writer than me. Damn him.

Before we get down to business I feel it would be remiss of me not to bore you with some of my holiday snaps. It was fantastic to be back in South Africa and I managed to drive all over the country seeing old friends and family.

I did a lot of sitting and looking - the Peter Biskind book on my lap didn’t get read very much!

The wonderful Keiskamma Art Project in the Eastern Cape. You can read more about the amazing work The Keiskamma Trust does in the fields of art and health here: www.keiskamma.orgThere is also a lovely documentary I saw about it that just played at the Encounters Festival in South Africa called “Keiskamma - A Story of Love” by Miki Redelinghuys. I highly recommend tracking it down.

Beautiful things for sale in the Keiskamma shop.

This vervet monkey chased me into the house. It is humiliating to be chased by a small monkey. I know that now.

Vultures on a tree at dusk. Later we watched these vultures fight with two hyenas over an elephant carcass.

An elephant right by the side of the road in Addo Elephant Park.

A giraffe crossing the road in front of us in the Kruger National Park.

Zebedees in Kruger.

This was taken in Franschoek in the wine region near Cape Town. The town is ridiculously beautiful and the wine flows freely which is never a bad thing.

Ok, that’s it with the fun and games. Next post will be back to the gritty business of film. No monkeys.