Buzzfest: The Annual IFP Market

Part film festival, part open mic, part mideastern bazaar, the Independent Feature Project's Annual Market in New York has earned its reputation as the place to submit your film if you're not content to spend your life toiling in artistic obscurity.

by Carmen Ficarra | Published January 21, 2001

Everyone who comes here knows this is where films such as Clerks and The Brothers McMullen were discovered. And while they might spend the week watching movies and networking with their peers, in the end everyone knows they're here for only two reasons: to create a buzz for their own film, and to have it seen by the programmers and distributors who can get it shown to real audiences.

We seem to be nearing the point where video is such a mainstay of independent moviemaking; it'll soon be the indies shot on film that raise eyebrows. It's no surprise then that many who attended the 22nd IFP Market - held last September at the Angelika Film Center in downtown Manhattan (with additional screenings at the nearby Pioneer Theater) - were talking about digital video. The huge number of DV projects at the Market raised questions about whether the future of theatrical releases will see more video-to-film transfers, if the tide might turn instead toward improving the state of the art of video projection equipment, or if theaters would be forced to screen films in both formats.

Much of the talk surrounding DV centered on concerns about quality. Heidi Reinberg, co-producer of The Curse, a comedy shot on 16mm, fears that DV is destined to "dummy down" film. "They say go out and shoot it on digital because we're not going to pay you to shoot on film," she says of buyers infatuated with the economic advantages of video. "And then people just think they can make movies by grabbing a video camera and not putting the craft into it. People say they're editors just because they can run an Avid. That does not mean you can tell a story."

Working in video, however, has proved advantageous in the area of documentaries, which many believed were the best thing the 2000 Market had to offer. Nearly half of everything screened - either as completed features, shorts or works in progress - were docs, and the overwhelming percentage of them were shot on video.

Any filmmaker who's attended an IFP Market knows the drill: Every available minute you have, until the moment your film screens, is spent passing out promo cards, hanging posters, shaking hands and talking up your film to everyone you can. You hand out tapes, buttons, compact discs, CD-ROM's. If there were babies to kiss, you'd probably do that, too. The point is to get a big audience for your film; the better to impress distributors, stroke your ego and create a good post-screening buzz. But the competition is fierce: seven screens of continuous programming adding up to nearly 400 hours of possible viewing over a seven-day period. Even so, the quality of the films screened this year was considered to be the highest ever.

The best of the documentaries set out to raise awareness about important issues past and present. One of the most powerful was the work-in-progress, Absolutely Safe?, Carol Ciancutti-Leyva's look at the link between breast implants and disease. The film challenges research cited by the FDA to claim implants are safe, and is disturbing in both the information and issues/41/images it reveals. Disturbing issues/41/images of another sort abounded in two films about the WTO uprisings in Seattle in November, 1999. Rus Thompson's 30 Frames a Second: The WTO in Seattle, takes a personal approach as he carries his camera into the streets and tries to make sense of the violence around him (see "Documentary" this issue, page 44 - ed). Shaya Mercer's Trade-Off makes less of the mayhem surrounding the WTO, and focuses on what people were there protesting in the first place - most importantly the issue of genetically modified foods whose safety is a matter of debate.

Protesters of another era were featured in Rebels With a Cause, Helen Garvey's meticulously researched documentary about Students for a Democratic Society, the protest movement so instrumental in helping change America in the 1960s. Another aspect of the 1960s was examined in Entertaining Vietnam, Mara Wallis' fascinating work-in-progress about men and women who entertained troops during the Vietnam War. The most weirdly compelling documentary was Fever Pitch. Willard Morgan takes us on a bizarre odyssey as he attempts to meet with Michael Moore - turning the tables on the Roger & Me director who, Morgan says, refused to return his calls.

Of all the "mockumentaries" on the IFP schedule (and there were a few too many), the best and most unique by far was World Record Guy, a comic short about a father and son engaged in mortal competition over such honors as "longest shower" or "most marshmallows eaten." Keep an eye on Mitch Braff and Chris Thompson, who've rigged what could've been an overblown skit into a miraculous little deadpan jewel.

Whether these films will find a distributor by the time this issue of MovieMaker goes to press is anyone's guess. But distributors are only part of the equation. Those at the Market, when asked if they thought they could play a part in expanding the public's taste by taking on more unique and challenging films, were quick to draw attention to the reality of dealing with buyers. "They totally dictate what we pick up," said Dawn Fields of Mainline Releasing.

"They might watch something for 10 minutes and say, 'There's nothing's happening, I'm not interested. Pass.' " Stuart Struten, of Panorama Entertainment, said there's often a wide gulf between what he thinks is good and what he thinks he can sell to a buyer. "We adapt to the marketplace, not dictate. You can introduce new things, but there's only so far you can go with something that's radical and different."

As Donna Wheeler, whose feature Death of a Saleswoman screened as a work-in-progress, pointed out, even being open-minded enough to modify your film to appeal to buyers doesn't necessarily mean a sale. "They say, 'If you change this, change that, make this character into that - then you'll have all our resources.' When you say, 'Okay, if I do all that it's a sure thing?' And they say, 'Nope, there's no guarantee.' So you just go around making changes for people...on your own dime." MM