THE FUTURE OF THE INDEPENDENT FILM

by Yervand Von Kochar

There is a dark cloud hovering over an independent film these days. There are fears that as a production mode and as an artistic expression the independent film is dying.

One of the reasons of the downfall is the fact that seeing the potential of an independently produced film, the studios launched their own independent wings that eventually crippled the spirit of an independent film. The filmmakers who were not expecting studio profits all of a sudden became involved with the studios and eventually succumbed to the dynamic of its machine; some out of greed some out of necessity.

Another popular cause was the sheer amount of the independent film that had a double effect. It saturated the market, lowered the overall quality and hurt the independent brand on one hand and pushed independents toward becoming more and more commercial in order to get their movies sold and seen.

The technological revolution made the filmmaking process accessible to the masses and anyone who could follow their dog on a skateboard with a video camera felt that they had to conquer Hollywood next. A cinematographer friend of mine calls this brand of camera owners ‘Seven/Eleven’ filmmakers.

The process of democratization of cinema was similar to that of the popularization of sculpting when the costly and exclusive art of sculpting became the property of the craftsmen and they overwhelmed the market with cheesy imitations of Michelangelo’s “David”.
Now anyone could make a statue but still few could become sculptors.

The same happened after Gutenberg’s invention, when publishing gradually became a popular enterprise, on the bright side giving someone like Ben Franklin a shot at expressing his transformational ideas to the people of Philadelphia and on the flip side giving Howard Zinn a chance to corrupt his students and completely undo Matt Damon’s already fragile mind.
Let’s pray hard that they don’t democratize medical equipment next, or at least do it very, very slowly.

The democratization brought upon another cause of the downfall; the so-called ‘edge’. Nothing has ever been more destructive to cinema than the concept of it being “edgy’. Edge became the marketing advantage, the way to stand out from a flood of similar attempts at a movie.

By ‘edgy’ most understood being gross, disrespectful, dumb, idiotic, addicted, pro-Democrat party, anti-establishment, loose, pro-Che Guevara, moronic, violent, Marxist, anti-middle class, promiscuous, depressed, suicidal, dogmatically open-minded, cocky, spoiled, perverted and indiscriminately liberal.

This edge was so far from the center of not even the American life but a relatively sane human life in general that it made people equate an independent film with a bad acid trip. In a way, this generation’s experiments with the moving images were like the previous one’s experiments with hallucinogenic substances. They did it, had fun, some sex, then got over it and, as a result, managed to dent the culture with an impassable lameness.
The independent film is summarized perfectly by Cartman from the ‘South Park’ when he warns his friends not to watch independent movies since they are always about gay cowboys eating pudding. This was prophetic because this was done years before ‘The Brokeback Mountain’ emerged as an alternative Western movie.

In any event, these are just some of the causes of the sad state of the independent film today. It is hard to pinpoint which one of these is the overriding cause or if there is even one. It may be just a natural cycle, after all. Studios had their worse days and kept coming back. It’s life! Sometimes even, “It’s a Wonderful Life”!

Yet, there is something that makes me think that the problem cannot be explained solely within the framework of a movie industry. That something is the similarity of the downfall of the movies and the downfall of many other and different factors that constitute our society and culture.

And that something is the lack of seriousness!
The approach to life is not serious, it is not real. Everything is a game, a reality show. The life passes us by; yet, we act as if it is a video game, or a contestant game, or just a fun game, sometimes not even that fun but still a game.
Something somewhere made it all seem illusionary and not serious. Being dumb and superficial became a standard. Life was turned into a televised game; the climate was turned into a game of a global warming, statesmanship turned into a race and gender contest.

The overall approach became that of a gambler not of an owner, a consumer and not of a citizen. Our fantasies became our realities, ideal superheroes became our heroes, and the heroes fighting for us became our villains. We devalued and grounded fantasy by allowing it to substitute reality instead of abstracting it.
All the complex ingredients that constituted a real human being were substituted by a single organic formula that promised health but deprived us from meaning. We have traded the mystery of who we are for being ‘edgy’, and dismissed the directedionality of our evolution for a cheap contest.

The lack of seriousness in life is the lack of now, of being here at this time, in this place and owning our time and our space NOW! We broke the chain of time and timed out.
If we are to claim our life as it is given to us in this time and in this space, we have to become serious about ourselves, of what we say, of how we act and what we see.

In this permeating foolishness, a truly strong and successful independent film is an exception, because true independent film is not a noncommercial film but an artistic film that touches people.

Art is what touches people; it is something that the public finds because it craves it. They are not going to find an independently done non serious movie, because the studios will serve it to them much better and in a much better package.
People want someone who talks to them seriously, not about serious things necessarily, but seriously, earnestly, HONESTLY!
The word ‘Serious’ stems from Old French words ‘earnest, honest’.
So, the serious communication is above all earnest and honest communication. Or, honest communication will express itself through seriousness.

This is what is missing from our life and from its expression through moving images!
An independent movie that is earnest and honest will connect with audiences and it will make people buy tickets and wait for more.
For many years the independent film and the culture in general has been under the spell of relativism and libertine philosophy. The simple direct emotional communication through screen became considered as primitive and lacking a nuance. The plots became complicated and the characters became weak. Movies lost their masculinity and femininity and became metrosexual. It is easy to complicate, after all.

Independent (and in general) movies became dishonest and politically partisan. The independent film particularly dedicated itself to promotion of libertine and Marxist causes exclusively.
The independent film completely ignored the entire part of the human psyche, namely, its traditionalism and conservatism.
Conservatism not even in a political sense but as an innate condition of a human nature.

Traditional truths that passed the test of time, the truths that manifested the ability to renew with times were frontally attacked with alternative methods which failed to produce a result in real life but found a refuge in the movies. This became a cause of major disconnect between the truths and functions of life and the way those truths were ignored on the screen. In an attempt to be original, the independent film became untrue to reality, yet, zealously dedicated to ideology. It tried to shape reality which in itself is a Marxist approach to art, in which, art becomes an instrument of revolution.

The future success of independent film is in restoring the balance between reality and its understanding through an honest examination of life. As such it is inevitably going to turn conservative after a prolonged liberal reign. The return to the eternal values that have been conserved because of their worthiness and reality will return on the screen and it will be an unstoppable process.

Although, it will have a political effect to some degree, the real change is going to happen on a much deeper level. The process will be that of restoring the equilibrium and that will include conservation of all the worthy art of the liberal age as well.
Yet, the liberal power play with reality proved to be a complete failure. It was partly a reaction to an overly conservationist approach to cinematic and cultural values and in its early stage it had a moral force behind it. As everything progressive, though, it eventually became corrupt and hijacked by movements and ideologies that degraded the art form and violated its fundamental laws.

Reality is a combination of things seen and unseen and as such it is a much deeper concept than it is comprehended by those who try to alter it through artificial means.
The less the reality was understood, the more it was altered and distorted.
The end of this corrosion is near and the flower that is going to spring from under the pebble of the collapsing machine will have a conservative scent.
It is a truth that will not be kindly accepted by many, but it is a process that is beyond anyone’s control. Those filmmakers who stand on the threshold of this process will be violently opposed by the old guard, some will be broken, some will triumph but the power of reality will undo the artificial resistance and the equilibrium will be restored.

God Speed!