https://www.hammertonail.com/shorts-contest/sundance-2011-indie-is-back/ What to Watch Tue, 09 Jan 2024 16:44:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.hammertonail.com/shorts-contest/sundance-2011-indie-is-back/#comment-13680 Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:55:15 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=7917#comment-13680 […] I watched added to my excitement about this year’s fest (read Mike Ryan’s excellent “Indie Is Back!??” essay for his take on what made this year […]

]]> https://www.hammertonail.com/shorts-contest/sundance-2011-indie-is-back/#comment-13673 Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:05:00 +0000 http://www.hammertonail.com/?p=7917#comment-13673 As the producer of two films that count in relation to your smart and true map of indie cred (Cheryl Dunye’s, “The Watermelon Woman,” 1995, $100 K, and one of the last films to get an NEH grant and be debated on the house floor because of it, and Cheryl Dunye’s, “The Owls,” 2010, $21K, made by a collective, distributed by the Film Collaborative, recouped costs this January through festival showings and international sales at a few thousand a pop, and coming to home video in March with First Run Features), I think your discussion of indie history, from Clerks to Hamlet 2 is dead on. The two indie films I have produced are as wildly innovative as the stories we try to tell: of black queer community, questions of self-representation and truth (and fiction and documentary), and cinema’s labored history in relation to the experiences of misunderstood others. We have had an audience for both (thank god for the international queer film circuit: the one arm of indie cinema still truly viable in the sense of community, avid and hungry film lovers, and a supportive infrastructure). Gods speed to QUIRK CRAP and the TWEE INDIE (why the doc was the only thing to see at Sundance for so many years past). One cautionary note, however. Our tiny film did as well as it did because of Dunye’s name (and those of many of our cast, as well, starlets with their own fans). She and we built a history, and a different kind of cred, through our years within the new queer cinema, and I’m not sure how our “success” with “The Owls” would play out for people who have to sell their $21K film with just the film to show.

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