by Michael Galinsky & Ed Halter
The Lost Film Festival was a revelation. After driving through the early April snow from New York to Philly, taking not a few wrong turns to find 4040 Space, the Lost Film Fest’s venue, we stumbled into the club around 1:00 pm for a screening that had started at 12:30 pm. The film was going and the room was pitch dark, but as our eyes adjusted we realized that there were hundreds of people packed into the makeshift theater , watching a projected video image on a jerry-rigged bedsheet screen. To a few jaded New Yawkers like us, the idea that over 500 people had arrived on a Sunday morning to see a two-hour shot-on-video movie was jaw-droppingly unbelievable.The feature, "Edge of Quarrel", was more than a bit home-movie clunky, but like the rest of the audience, we just couldn’t help but get drawn in by the fucked-up charm of its melodramatic West-Side-Story-meets-Repo-Man plot. Set in Seattle and starring a number of local musicians like Rocky Votolato from Waxwing, John Pettibone from Undertow and Dann Gallucci from The Murder City Devils, the what-if story concerns a feud between straightedge kids and punk rockers and the film is filled with lots of in-jokes. It’s hard to imagine a better audience than the one at 4040 that day, totally filled with kids from the scene.
4040 Space, a retooled warehouse that usually serves as a music venue, stayed packed the entire day, even with lots of comings and goings. In between films there was a music performance by Lightning Bolt and even a fire-eating magician. And there were theatrics of other sorts as well. During the Q&A; following "Zegota, Wreck Your Life", a digital doc about the North Carolina band Zegota on tour, a kid from a Cambridge, MA band began accusing Zegoda of stealing his amp. The situation quickly escalated into a Jerry Springer style brawl that fell back from the stage into the audience. Pretty soon one of the Zegota guys was up on a chair reciting lines from French Situationist Guy Debord’s anti-capitalist manifesto "Society of the Spectacle," covered in bright-red fake blood. Sure, it was a tad pretentious in the end, but the staged confrontation completely shook up and confused the audience, breaking them out of their cinematized Sunday stupor and back into the here and now. Viva la punque-rocque!
All that revolutionary rhetoric sure made us hungry, and we hiked down to the local Abyssinian restaurant for lunch. When we returned, we discovered that we had missed "Ghetto Venue" a 13 minute short on 16mm about late West Philly punk club Stalag 13.
Amazingly enough, the fest’s completely packed line-up stayed on schedule for most of the day. It only veered off course after the Philly premiere of Esther Bell's digital feature "GodAss". The crowd was so smitten with the film that Bell and cast members George Crowley and David Ilku were forced to answer questions for well over her allotted half hour. Then, a gang of young lady filmmaker groupies surrounded Bell to buy copies of her tape and glean magic moments with the plucky director.
Ian MacKaye was on hand soon after to offer up some words before the Philly premiere of "Instrument", the amazing documentary of the band that Fugazi made with filmmaker Jem Cohen. Although it’s one of Ed’s favorite films, we couldn't stay for the Q&A; since we had to drive back to NYC. We hear it was lively and engaging.
At the end of the day, the Lost Film Festival was an inspiring and eye-opening event. We heard a lot of folks talk about a new resurgence in roots'-rockin DIY filmmaking, and even a new socially-engaged, political edge to the work. This was a notable trend many definitely saw, albeit in a more urbane, subdued manner, at NYUFF 2000. In the 90s, it seemed that indie filmmaking emerged as a new way for people to enter the film industry and make their careers. Now, underground events are exploring ways to make films with no interest in mass market appeal.
And more than a new tone in productions, there’s a new energy and commitment to getting the films out there and making more events happen. Within the past year, New York has sprouted so many new microcinema screening opportunities that you can see underground and avant-garde movies every night of the week on a regular basis. David Wilson is driving around right now showing his film Magic City along with a bunch of other films and live bands with his PunkNotRock Tour. Animator Martha Colburn just left for Europe for her second Continental tour. North Carolina’s stuff DoubleTake Documentary Festival sprouted its own upstart rival fest this year, the more political AnotherTake Festival. And Lost Film Fest itself plans at least two more events by this summer, one going head-to-head with the Republican National Convention.
Clearly, there’s something in the air. Over the next year, check back here, because we’re contacting the best underground film events and don’t think we’re not gonna be there.
To hell with the multiplex. Viva la revelation.
check out Mike & Ed's video coverage of the Lost Film Festival