Bringing the Art Back to the Art House

Some think of art houses as the Wild West of the movie-going world, places where just about anything (think silent films, avant garde marathons, Matthew Barney covered in Vaseline) goes. But as digital video and editing software have made it easer than ever to make films, and as the expanding film festival circuit has made it easier to generate buzz for even the smallest titles, art houses have been forced to become increasingly selective.Today, there’s a conventional format that most art house venues (outside special repertory programming) demand — namely first-run, feature-length films that have garnered some degree of attention, either through who made the film, who stars in the film, or what early audiences have said about the film at a festival. It’s a lesson many frustrated first-time filmmakers have learned the hard way — by premiering at the wrong festival, by failing to get a rising star in the lead role, or by delivering a 65-minute final product that is deemed too short to warrant a theatrical release.But “conventional models” are what art houses design themselves to avoid, which is why many are now looking to offer an alternative. In New York, IFC Center is the latest art house venue to roll out a special program designed to woo audiences to special presentations of shorter and relatively unknown films without any “names” attached to them.“We’re trying to celebrate works that don’t fit the industry’s cookie-cutter mold, which dictates what features get released in art houses across the country,” John Vanco, the theater’s vice president and general manager, said. “And we thought by bringing in the filmmakers in person, by celebrating new works and promoting it as a series, it would be easier for our audience and our members to understand.”With the series called “Dialogues on Film,” Mr. Vanco hopes to replace the occasional in-person appearance by a filmmaker with a monthly or semi-monthly series in which a director programs an evening with old and new work and screens that material during an on-stage discussion with moderator Scott Macaulay, the editor of Filmmaker magazine. In a sense, “Dialogues on Film” is more about the setting than the product; ideally, the informal discussion and unpredictable content will become the major selling points. We’ve got the moderator and the good taste, the series seems to be saying, now trust us on the talent.“I initially wanted to start this series with Brent Green,” Mr. Vanco said, recalling the “Evening With Brent Green” that took place last January. “But you need a series like this in place beforehand, something recognizable that you can then use to reach out to your audience. Otherwise, if you have a filmmaker like Brent Green, this amazing young animator that only a few people have come to know, how do you get new audiences to check it out?”Since the series began in earnest early this month, Messrs. Vanco and Macaulay have tried to toy with these ideas of established artists, emerging talents, and cross-over audiences. On July 9, the filmmaker Bradley Beesely appeared with his cult hit documentary “Okie Noodling” before screening new footage from two yet-to-be completed projects. On July 24, the director Jem Cohen appeared to screen his new documentary, “Building a Broken Mousetrap,” a portrait of the Dutch band the Ex — a difficult-to-classify work that Mr. Cohen mysteriously described as “concert film. City film. Protest Film.”“There were a lot of faces I recognized that night as fans of Jem’s work,” Mr. Vanco said. “But right before the film we asked the audience to raise their hands if they were fans of the band, and half the people raised their hands. Jem said this was the first time so many people in a screening had known the band … and that’s what this series is about, drawing on all these different constituencies.”IFC organizers said another filmmaker is close to confirming an appearance in late August. But for now, the last scheduled “Dialogues on Film” event is set for this Wednesday evening, when the documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker will appear in person to screen a wealth of unseen footage he recorded alongside Bob Dylan in the 1960s for the documentary “Don’t Look Back.”Calling the project “65 Revisited,” and crafting the documentary from more than 20 hours of unseen footage from the same Bob Dylan tour as seen in “Don’t Look Back,” the documentarian has created an entirely new vision of those exciting days with the folk icon. The evening will also feature two New York-based documentaries by Mr. Pennebaker, shot during roughly the same period: a recording of an Alan Ginsberg reading, as well as a recording of a Bob Neuwirth jazz performance.“If you look at all of these,” Mr. Vanco said, “there’s animation and short films and documentaries — Jem’s film was 62 minutes long, which most people wouldn’t consider feature-length. We want to bring some respect and attention to the kind of cinema that doesn’t fit the 75-200-minute conventional feature. We want to let people know what else is out there, and to challenge and wow audiences with a real, live theatrical experience.But he also wants people to remember what going to the movies used to be like, before marketing and star power were the determining factors of what got made.“On some level, I wish I could pull together an A feature and a B feature, and a newsreel and a short, and present that to the audience,” he said. “That’s why half the country went to a movie every week 55 years ago — it was an experience. When they come to see a movie here, I want them to remember not just what they saw, but that they saw it with us.”* * *As most movie studios peer years into the future, rushing to snatch up release dates in late April and early May to unveil their forthcoming blockbusters, the idea of opening a movie in late July seems like an absurd proposition. That’s when families take vacations, when college students leave campus, when teenagers are trapped in summer jobs. These are the dog days of summer.So imagine the surprise rippling across the industry today, as studios realize that “The Simpsons Movie” exploded onto the scene not just with a $71 million opening weekend, but a $30 million opening day — the best single day for any movie this year (and the 17th best ever on record).If that was the good Hollywood news of the weekend, the more sobering box office figures concerned “I Know Who Killed Me,” the new Lindsay Lohan thriller. Hitting theaters Friday just alongside more fallout from the actress’s most recent arrest, “I Know Who Killed Me” opened on a paltry 1,300 screens and was not made available to critics for review. And late Sunday, the box office tally says it all: A dismal grand total of $3.4 million.“I Know Who Killed Me” was in some ways a crucial test of Ms. Lohan’s current market value. Is it worth it for a studio to put up extra money to insure Ms. Lohan and get access to her legions of fans? Judging by the $3 million opening this past weekend, one has to wonder how many of those fans remain.ssnyder@nysun.com

Bringing the Art Back to the Art House

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