Back to selection
WHAT WOULD THE COMMUNITY THINK?
Over at his blog, filmmaker A. J. Schnack thinks about the whole mumblecore thing with tons of links to all of this week’s NYC press coverage and more (including the filmmaker’s own piece on Swanberg and DIY distribution in February, 2006). Schnack, a doc maker, considers the phenomenon and takes the right lessons away from it:
And perhaps 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.
As Tom Hall, programmer of the Sarasota Film Festival, concluded in an expecially brilliant piece about this filmmaking movement (and some of the criticism it has received) wrote:
“If you need to know one thing, know this; If, on any given night in America, there is room on the couch, if someone needs a camera operator or an actor, if a script needs reviewing or a computer crashes and footage needs to be edited, I know that all of these artists would be there to help one another out. In the end, the auteur theory lives on in a collaborative network of very talented people, but each is his or her own creative talent, instantly recognizable.”
I think that’s the biggest lesson of this day. Because as talented as Joe is, as fine a film as HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS is, the celebration in New York is about a community.
We can, and should, learn from it.
