George Clooney received the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globes this year. In his acceptance speech, he said something that any artist can appreciate. When talking about the Hollywood Foreign Press, he said, “…thank you for keeping small films alive; big ones do fine, it’s the little ones that need an audience.” Film festivals provide an audience for these “small” films.
“Small” films are screened throughout the country (that’s right folks, film festivals aren’t just held in California). One of the local film festivals is known as the Rosebud Film Festival and is held every year through Arlington Independent Media (a nonprofit organization in Arlington, Virginia). This festival has been around since 1990 and showcases some of the best filmmakers in the Northern Virginia, DC, and Maryland area. The festival awards cash prizes ($1,000) to the top five films and seeks to, “…recognize and honor the innovative, unusual, experimental, and deeply personal in regional film and video making, and to offer audiences with the finest in locally produced, contemporary work.”
This year, the twenty chosen films aired at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia on January 23rd, 2015. I sat down to talk with creators of two of the unique films before the festival about their experience making the films and where they found their inspiration for their projects.
Matthew Lucas’ film is a comedy called Dira (this means hole in Czech) and is about a physics professor who doesn’t want to be a physics professor. His real passion is getting a device (specifically a gun) to work that will, theoretically, gain him access to some new dimension. This is the introduction to the joke of the film, which is a big dick joke. In the words of Matthew Lucas, it’s about, “…a guy who can’t get his gun to work because he’s thinking about it too much.”
The most notable aspect of the film is that it’s in a foreign language; Czech. Matthew studied film in the Czech Republic at a school called FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague); one of Europe’s oldest film schools. He worked with Czech actors and a Czech crew (with the exception of his editor, his director of photography, and a few production assistants).
Matthew initially wrote the film in English and then his Producer translated the film into Czech line by line. It was important to Matthew that the film be in a foreign language because he thought it would result in a better performance. He also directed and storyboarded the film.
The hard work and dedication put into this project paid off. The film was shown at a screening at American University (this is where Matthew attends school) at the American Visions Awards and won best fiction film. Matthew is honored to have his film screened at Rosebud as well.
Another film that aired at Rosebud was a project called The Machine, written by Henry Leeker, produced by Zack Griffin, and directed by Zack Gross (Hand Me Down Films). The film is a unique science fiction ghost story about an inventor who invents, “the machine” and the two crooks who stumble upon it. When Zack Gross and Henry Leeker started, all they knew was that they wanted to write a ghost story, but didn’t know exactly what they wanted the ghost story to be about. After three pots of coffee, a lot of reading and discussing, Henry Leeker says, while reaching to pour another cup of coffee, “You know if you think about it, all ghosts are time travelers.”
The film is unique in that there is no dialogue, only voice over. It is also unique in that it tackles a complex philosophical question; can people communicate with ghosts, and possibly even God, through technology?
This idea lead to the four-day shoot at Bacon’s Castle in Surrey, Virginia.
During the interview, the film creators educated me on science fiction and how old machines are represented in these fictional stories. There’s a great line in Hellboy and Indiana Jones that Zack Gross quoted for me; “Do you realize what the arc of the covenant is; it’s a radio for speaking to God.” Tying time travel, ghost stories, and a little bit of religion together, the boys came up with, The Machine; an eerie short that was filmed at a haunted castle. The audio recording was done in their apartment, at an audio booth that, according to Zack Gross, “…was made up of blankets and pillows…with no air conditioning.”
The hard work done on this film paid off…literally. The Machine was chosen as one of the top five films and the boys won the cash prize for their project.
Other films tackled internal and external struggles. There was a young woman stuck in the middle of a conflict between her fiancé and sister, a young man coping with the dullness of his relationship, a young man approaching a girl, only to find out she’s deaf, learning sign language and ultimately, succeeding in asking her out, a young man cheating on his wife with a friend of theirs (who was also married), and so much more.
Working on a tight budget, with little resources, these filmmakers work very hard to make their films and get their work shown. The innovative and creative talent of these filmmakers is something that should not be overlooked and it’s important that audiences support them. Remember, we are the audience these “small” films need.