DC Independent Film Festival March 5-11, 2004

In its fifth edition the 2004 DC independent film festival (DCIFF) continues to establish itself as a platform for independent film makers, carving an identity that sets it apart from the larger and more prestigious 15 year running Washington DC International Festival. Carol Bidault, the fest director has the challenge of creating a niche for the DCIFF in the immense US film festival market that counts up to 900 fests with new one added each week.

Which was not an easy task with respect to funding and access to the film industry. .. The Washington DC area is not a bedrock for creative and commercial film or television productions and headquarters only the cable networks Discovery Communications, National Geographic, and the decentralized Public Broadcasting System. Washington’s claim to be the third largest U.S. production center and the ‘documentary capital of the world’ is based on the US government contracting great numbers of productions, not necessarily creative filmmaking. As several panelists at the DCIFF put it bluntly to aspiring film producers as to how to break into the industry: “Move to New York or Los Angeles”.
Thus few industry representatives were at the DC Indie Fest, providing limited networking contacts its young film makers. Still, the DCIFF featured numerous informative seminars and roundtables on funding, production, marketing, and cultural diversity as well as workshops on screen writing and a two-day ‘Independent Film Market and Trade Show’. Whereas some of the seminars were well attended, the market had virtually no traffic. More than 300 productions could be screened, but only about thirty industry professionals took advantage of that service. Cable networks such as HBO, National Geographic, the Independent Film Channel, and the Cartoon Channel requested tapes from DCIFF rather than sending representatives. Most of the award winning films screened had prior exposure in other venues, thus were known to potential buyers.

The strong presence in the US film festival arena by established fests and markets catering to independents, makes the positioning of DCIFF as premiere independent venue or “park city retort’ to dissatisfaction with Sundance an ambitious undertaking.. Most indies gravitate to fest and markets with industry presence unless these venues have components justifying the entry fees or work time spent. This appeal results from outstanding seminars, strong presence of the press, or creative programs/ side bars which all can justify submission of productions. A good package of hotel, transportation and party amenities can be an incentive attracting film makers, amenities DCIFF cannot offer due to its limited budget.

Hampered by structural factors such as limited industry presence and scarcity of DC based independents, DCIFF is becoming nonetheless more important given the strength of its program and an evident audience appeal. Its idiosyncratic and controversial programming serves to shake up the political and social sensitivities of the capital’s film going audience.
Categories like “Declassified Flics”, “ Midnight Madness”, “Scary Movies”, “The Violent & Controversial”, “Not in Your Wildest Dreams”, and ‘Controversial Films about Men”, accounted for 21 of the 122
production screened, with numerous films in other categories also rather edgy... This evidently entails occasionally to sacrifice artistic standards and the screening of turkeys like the abominable first feature GORNO; AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Oliver Assiran and Less Nossri.

Fueled by widespread use of inexpensive production equipment more than 1000 productions were submitted, including feature films, documentaries, shorts, and animated productions. The fest featured, a World Cinema section focusing on the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Europe, and locally produced material, including works by local film students. With 400 submissions, documentaries were the single largest group, from which 28 were chosen. Memorable tiles were in other categories. Among outstanding animated films were Hyuntjoung Kim’s surrealistic 3D FOOD CHAIN about the strong devouring the weak and the ‘mockumentary’ comedy noir AMAZING JORGE about a man-eating Polish-born clown who turned into a celebrity. In the short section Andrew Sacks’ award winning subdued TWO SOLDIERS from a short story by W. Faulkner set in the early days of Worlds War II excelled through superb acting and cinematography.

Questioning our taken for granted preconceptions appeared to be the dominant theme for documentaries ranging from Matthew Boerman’s SLAUGHTER HOUSE to Ken Wyatt’s penetrating sociolinguistic analysis NIGGER OR NOT, and the marvelous film WHAT THE #$*! DO WE KNOW by Betsy Chasse and William Antz, a cogent yet funny and technically superior visual presentation of how the mind works and how neurological processes shape our desires. Three upsetting and unsettling documentaries best met the objective of creating cognitive dissonance by forcing the audience to reflect about the notion of normal and common sense assumptions. In one way or the other they dealt with the construction of identities and should have been shown together as a group. With WHOLE Melody Gilbert succeeded in penetrating without sensationalizing the world of white man with the ‘wannabe amputee syndrome’ or what has become known as the ‘Body Integrity Identity Disorder”, men who believe that they are ‘whole’ only if one-legged. Incidentally, none of the numerous men interviewed come across as suffering from an identifiable psychological disorder. THE GIFT by Louise Hogarth is an award winning and documentary analyzing the act of intentional infection with AIDS among gay men and related risky sexual behavior. This film is a must see for those who want to understand why HIV/AIDS infections are on the rise again in the USA. The third documentary, AMERICAN EUNUCHS – DESIGNED IDENTITIES by Franco Sacchi and Gian Claudio Guiducci (on which this writer worked as a consulting producer), shows men who voluntarily choose to be castrated because they aspire to an a-sexual identity. Amputating one leg in order to achieve wholeness, infecting oneself on purpose with AIDS to be truly gay, or selecting an a-sexual identity through castration are phenomena (or possibly symptoms) of the post-industrial consumer societies, most difficult to grasp in ‘rational’ terms.

This kind of documentary representation of such controversial issues is the material the DCIFF needs to set it apart and to continue increasing an appreciative audience which reached 4,500 in 2004.


Claus Mueller
cmueller@hunter.cuny.edu