CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 8/26/05

Visionquest:
Filmmakers Alliance's VisionFest '05

By nick birren

This year's VisionFest celebrated the best of new filmmakers at the DGA with awards, screenings, and words of advice from writer/director David O. Russell (who reminds us that it's okay to suck).

Just like anything else, Hollywood is a business. Legendary filmmaker John Boorman (Deliverance) once said that Hollywood is all about turning money into art, and art back into money. This begs the question: how much is film really art, if financial gain holds priority over creative freedom?

Focusing entirely on the artistic edge of filmmaking, there was an awards ceremony last Wednesday at the Directors Guild of America that valued art over commerce: VisionFest '05, presented by the Filmmakers Alliance (FA). Comprised of hundreds of directors, producers, writers, actors, industry technicians, artists, and film professionals, the 12-year-old non-profit FA roots itself in L.A.'s independent filmmaking community through publicly based activity and education, celebrating aspiring and established filmmakers with VisionFest since 1998.

Each year, FA unspools a program of the best short films produced by the Alliance in the previous year. This year's program showcased nine short films, all centering around the theme of sex. Some of the films were intriguing, some were ponderous, but all shared the commonality of creative freedom and ambitious goals. The films honored as the best of the year were:

The Matchstick Man (directed by Tim Byron Owen)
Urban Sprawl (Ahab)
Cold Dark Night (Kenny Hargrove)
Polly's Global Walk (PJ Letofsky)
The Kids of Widney High - Pretty Girls (Michael Medaglia)
Un Despertar (Jay Miracle)
Burning Man (Dominick Scarola)
Archive Dream (Antony Berrios)
The Gap - An FA Sketchbook (Destri Martino)
Running MLK - An FA Sketchbook (Jordan Kelly Montgomery)
Renaissance Girl (David Jackson Willis)
Vampire Moose - Adamantium Elbow (Beth Dewey)
Father's Day (Billy Gillespie)

As is tradition, this year the Filmmakers Alliance presented the Annual Vision Award to a filmmaker whose distinct voice and creative ambition inspires emerging filmmakers to push the boundaries of the cinematic art. Past recipients include Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys), Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire), Allison Anders (Four Rooms), and Alexander Payne (Sideways). Last Wednesday night, the award went to acclaimed filmmaker David O. Russell, who was cheered on by Huckabees star Jason Schwartzman and Filmmakers Alliance founder Jacques Thelemaque.

"It's about being pure and unconventional," notes writer/director Russell, in an exclusive interview with CS Weekly, "and trying a few things that you know may not be for everybody." Russell received the award for his absurdist sense of humor and significantly diverse filmography, including Spanking the Monkey, Flirting With Disaster, and Three Kings. Of all his films, Russell says, I Heart Huckabees is the one film that really embraces being creatively ambitious and pushes the limits of independent filmmaking.

"Only a minority of people are drawn to it," says Russell, "because it's a real particular movie. I knew that it wasn't going to appeal to everybody, and that's the leap you take. You have to say, 'I don't care, because I love this.' You just do it because you love it." For Russell, the short films shown during the ceremony had that same type of love and dedication.

By constantly attending film festivals, Russell says he's seen and suffered through plenty of bad movies. "It's okay to suck -- my first short film sucked -- that's part of the process."

Having expected to see movies that sucked, Russell found himself really digging the young filmmakers' originality and inventive storylines. In particular, he singles out Broadcast 23, in which a sexually active Yeti terrorizes a researcher during mating season. "I was just laughing my head off," Russell recalls. "I have a million ideas like that that need to be pursued. Sometimes you toss away these amazingly original ideas, and those are often the ones that turn out to be the most fun!"

At the end of our exclusive, we asked Russell which is more important: the writing or the actual production of a movie? The writer/director put it plain and simple: "All I can say is that the writing is the most important, because that's where you really make your film."

Nick Birren is from Chicago and is a die-hard Cubs fan. If anyone else out there has this same disease, click on the byline for support.

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