Filmes
INDEPENDENCE IS RELATIVE
On Saturday night, Oct. 27, the Clube da Mostra held the debate “North American Independent Cinema”, which counted with the presence of directors Morgan Dews, of Must Read After My Death, Canadian Ed Gass-Donnelly (This Beautiful City) and Wayne Price and Lucas Akoskin, respectively director and protagonist of The Doorman. Mere coincidence, but three debuting documentary makers. As mediator, the presence of cinema critic Rubens Ewald Filho. Since the reality of independent production is characterized by the constant struggle for financing and working conditions, each maker started the discussion by making a summary of their experience.
Morgan Dews said that Must Read After My Death was a very personal project, starting with the material that he uses: 50 hours of recording his grandmother in psychiatry sessions, during the boom years of psychoanalysis in the United States, in the 60s, and also around 200 homemade films. “I decided to take the family’s skeletons out of the closet and I discovered a young woman in my grandmother, with a very outgoing behavior for that time. I edited the material myself”, he commented. When asked about the intimate nature of his creation, he argued that started from an individual situation to focus on universal themes: “After all, all of us have kind of dysfunctional families and all have some extent of contact, even if indirectly, with psychoanalysis. I based myself on this remarkable identity.” Even so, he is the first to acknowledge that his film is so intense that it is quite common for spectators to walk out on it.
Wayne Price made it clear that The Doorman is a staged documentary. When sharing an apartment in New York with actor Lucas Akoskin, from Argentina, Price took advantage of the fact that Lucas new well the nightlife of that town, where a host (or doorman) deliberates on who deserves or not to enter a night club, and, with a script set out on just seven pages, he hired a cameraman and started to record this rather particular universe. Lucas is the only actor; all others interviewees are real, filmed in real situations. Only after some months of filming, with 70 hours of raw material, the film already started to take shape. “We went backwards through the process”, he joked.
Ed Gass-Donnelly entered the conversation in a privileged situation, not just because he made is movie on film. “In Canada, there is a type of insurance for artists, so if you spend your own money in developing your work, it is possible to deduct such value from your Income Tax”, he explained. To which Price replied saying that Canada at least has a decent government, which considers and invests in its artists, contrary to what happens in the United States. Gass-Donnelly added: “Anyway, I finished the film two days before this year’s Toronto festival started (obs: September 07), and the Mostra is the second festival at which I show my first work.” This Beautiful City is a personal and expressive trip through the very city of Toronto.
Impossible to avoid in any discussion on independent cinema, regardless of the origin of production, on the agenda was the topic of what defines the “independence” of a work and if indie cinema has different aesthetics. As to the first issue, Akoskin recalled that nowadays, films which are made according to what the director believes to be best for his work are so-called independent, without having to be accountable to higher authorities. And he added: “All major studios have their so-called independent division, such as Fox Searchlight or Paramount Classics. But by independence you simply see a US$ 100 million budget be slashed to a ‘mere’ US$ 10 million, the rest is all the same”. And as to the aesthetic side, the three filmmakers agreed that it is not the fact that a film is generated in an independent fashion that will defines the characteristics of the work. Each case is a different story, and the aesthetic option needs only to consider the needs of the film itself. “And it is necessary to have connections, lots of connections, because this can lower your costs”, concluded Price.