http://www.moviemaker.com/archives/print/summer-2015/independence-transcendent-tangerine-sean-baker/

Independence Transcendent: With the iPhone-ShotTangerine, Sean Baker Makes it Look Easy

If the phrase “independent film” has in recent years felt problematic to you, with one-time rebels “going studio” and A-listers populating your neighborhood film festival, Sean Baker’s Tangerine is cause for celebration.

This is one indie film that passes the proverbial “I’ll know it when I see it” test. It’s the story of two transgender prostitutes, Sin-Dee Rella and Alexandra (played by powerhouse newcomers Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor respectively), hellbent on revenge after Sin-dee finds out her pimp-boyfriend Chester has been cheating on her with a fellow hooker, a “fish” (or “cis woman,” a person born female who identifies as female) named Dinah. Hijinks ensue across the West Hollywood neighborhood that marks the transgender sex industry’s unofficial capital—a sizzling, colorful battleground of salesmanship, danger and camaraderie. It’s a freewheeling, raucously funny street opera with a sweet and soulful center, pulsing with enough verve and vitality to erase any whiff of the “issue film” it might have been.

With a budget of about $100,000, leads cast directly off Santa Monica Boulevard, and guerilla-filmmaking scars to make Melvin Van Peebles proud, Tangerine could easily be the poster child for a certain scrappy, festival-friendly modern indie—even before you learn that it was shot on the iPhone 5s. Add that all up and you have Sean Baker’s flashiest spectacle yet by far, after four previous features: Four Letter Words, Take Out, Prince of Broadway and Starlet.

Of course, it would be a mistake to isolate any of those aspects from the finished product that isTangerine, which ties its elements together so deftly that listing them as boxes to be checked seems gauche and reductive. At the film’s premiere in the Sundance NEXT section this January, Baker—flanked by his cast, DP Radium Cheung, multihyphenate collaborators Chris Bergoch, Shih-Ching Tsou and Darren Dean, and executive producer Mark Duplass—fielded 15 minutes of Q&A until revealing his camera of choice (by producing it, grinning, from his pocket). He drew gasps. Yet that offhanded announcement is of a kin with the team’s scrupulous efforts not to milk the “iPhone thing” as a publicity gimmick—as well as the humility beneath Tangerine’s pop and fizz, one that places the needs of the story above its creators’ egos.....more