First-time filmmakers, like first-time authors, can face a huge uphill climb when it comes to getting their work in front of an audience. Even as the digital revolution has democratized screening rooms — it’s not unusual these days for shopping mall megaplexes to offer an occasional “Locally Made” night — that same revolution has opened up the art form to many who would have once been shut out of the process. And as any filmmaker can tell you, getting a film made is only the first half of the process: it’s never fully alive until it’s been out there in front of some eyeballs.
How wonderful, then, to hear of the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival. Now entering its second year, the festival, which takes place in Middlebury, Vermont, is focused on those first and second-time filmmakers just beginning to come into flower. And while the event itself unfolds in late August, the people behind it have given it a more lasting impact by mounting a touring exhibition of the best of the 2015 offerings. Now touring the New England circuit, these special screenings hit Amherst Cinema this week, with festival director Lloyd Komesar on hand to introduce each program.
The shows, which focus solely on the documentary winners from the festival, are divided into two programs, each of which includes a short and a feature-length film. Program One lights up the screen at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday with My Gal Rosemarie, director Jason Tippet’s short about an elderly couple eking out an existence in Los Angeles. With their paltry Social Security payments just covering rent, Ray collects cans so he can take his love out for her 90th birthday.
That is followed by Omo Child: The River and The Bush, director John Rowe’s exploration of the Kara people in the Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. For generations, the Kara have considered some children — called “mingi” — to be cursed, and that their curse brings drought and disease to the tribe. To counter the curse, the children are killed. But now, an educated young Kara named Lale Labuko is challenging this terrible tradition (although officially banned, it continues in many areas). Rowe filmed for five years to capture Lale’s story.
The second program begins at 7 p.m. (on a separate ticket) with Rodrigo Rezende Meireles’ short John The Baptist, a Portuguese language documentary about a hard-working Brazilian laborer. That is followed by Romeo Is Bleeding, director Jason Zeldes’ feature about the violence that lingers over the neighborhoods of Richmond, California. There, resident Donté Clark tries to quell the turf war with words. A poet who draws on his own hometown experiences to inspire his fellow youth, he pulls together a band of fellow believers to mount an urban adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, hoping that the famous story of warring families will resonate in the community, and perhaps even bring about the chance for real dialogue.
Also this week: cartoons and comic books have become one of the go-to sources for movie material in recent decades — this week alone you can catch the original 1966 Batman movie (Amherst Cinema) and the newly released Angry Birds, based on the popular mobile game, which despite its questionable provenance sports a solid cast featuring a slew of SNL veterans like Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader. I haven’t seen it, but another Bill Hader project did catch my eye this week: the now-on-Netflix series Documentary Now!, which playfully pokes at the entire genre of documentary. Created by Hader with fellow SNL alums Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers, it stars Armisen and Hader, with each episode parodying a well-known documentary. The first one is a takeoff on the famous Maysles brothers’ 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. That original featured an aunt and cousin — “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” — of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and explored their strange, reclusive life at the estate that gave the film its name. In their “Sandy Passage,” Hader and Armisen, in drag, fully inhabit the two yet create something all their own. It’s an ingenious premise that keeps the series from falling into the now-tired “mockumentary” mode — here, the actors aren’t winking at the camera and breaking the fourth wall to talk to the director who is supposed to be following them around. Instead, the effect is a mix of familiar nostalgia and absurd hilarity, as they both pay homage to and pierce our most-loved documentaries (perhaps it’s easier to imagine it this way: think of Hader and Armisen remaking every year’s big hit film: they’d do The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Amélie, and so on). And while you don’t have to see all the originals before seeing these takeoffs, it’s definitely recommended, and, one suspects, part of the actors’ game plan all along.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
