Dylan Marchetti, founder of Variance Films, donated his afternoon Wednesday to mentoring filmmakers at IFP’s Marketing & Distribution Labs. Variance, a distribution company that has overseen the releases of niche indies and foreign imports like Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Littlerock, and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, has built a reputation very much in line with the trailblazing, DIY-attitude that many of IFP’s lab filmmakers hold dear. And it was a great match, as Marchetti spent the afternoon listening to these filmmakers discuss their marketing and distribution strategies, offering tailored advice about the distribution paths that he felt […]

Damien Chazelle’s Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is a throw back and perhaps a harbinger of things to come, a bebop tinged DIY mumblemusical that, despite its New Wavesque 16mm B&W aesthetic, is very much a movie of this time and moment. It concerns a relatively young, black and talented trumpet player named Guy and his would be, perhaps still his lover, a white grad student named Madeline (the oddly alluring Desiree Garcia). Played by real life Boston jazz scene leading light Jason Palmer, Guy engages in a series of pseudo-romances, bemoans the marginality of the relatively esoteric Jazz […]