Home Grown Cinema INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS SHOOT ON A SHOESTRING by Sara Shapouri photo courtesy of Susan Winter The Virginia Film Festival is spotlighting local talent with various functions and activities which will take place throughout the weekend. The Festival's annual Saturday night Gala, "A New Decade, A New Millennium,"embodies this commemoration, recognizing both the Festival's tenth anniversary and the opening of New Millennium Studios, based in Petersburg and founded by Tim and Daphne Reid. Local filmmakers and U.Va. alumni will be on hand presenting films and participating in workshops. University alumni Richard Tuggle, Mark Johnson, Marshall Persinger, and Lewis Allen will attend to present various films that they have written, directed, or produced. In addition, local filmmaker Susan Winter will be presenting her first feature film Pousse Cafe, and celebrated documentarian Paul Wagner is giving a sneak preview of his first dramatic feature, Windhorse. All of these filmmakers are also participating in "Storming the Media," a series of panels directed toward aspiring filmmakers. Festival director Richard Herskowitz emphasizes that a major part of the Film Festival's mission is to promote film production in Virginia. Through the new studio and the Festival, he believes Virginia will become much more accessible to the film industry, which will help develop the state artistically and economically. He also notes that both the Festival and the studio are responses to the rising number of independent filmmakers like Winter and Wagner. However crowded the film industry is at this moment with independent films, the process of making a film without the assistance of a major motion picture company is still incredibly difficult. Paul Wagner remarks, "There were, there are, and there will be" financial difficulties. Susan Winter faced the same problem when she tried to get financial support for her film, primarily due to the fact that virtually no one knew of her directorial skills. She, like Wagner, realized that to make the film that she wanted, she would have to do it herself. Both agree that the fiscal limitations of independent films have helped produce some of the most unique movies ever made, precisely because the directors and producers must be extremely resourceful in the filmmaking process. Wagner cites the amazing documentary Hoop Dreams, noting that because no company would have ever had the vision to commission such a film, the movie was shot over a long period of time whenever its makers had the funds for it. Although these money problems were discouraging for both Wagner and Winter, they each found support in friends and family. Pousse Cafe was filmed in only four weeks due to a large amount of help from people close to Winter. She stresses that the film would never have been released without her loved ones and adept crew. Wagner also had to rely on friends, particularly for the portions of his film that were shot clandestinely in Tibet and Nepal. He emphasizes that the only way he could have made the motion picture was with the help of two friends from Katmandu, who not only recruited people to appear in the movie, but also located props and found places to film. Appropriately, he refers to his method of filming as the "independent guerrilla approach," a term that can be applied to Winter as well, who employed a grass-roots infrastructure enabling the birth of something bold, creative, and often ignored by the mainstream. One difficult aspect of independent filmmaking is the process of getting one's film distributed on the festival circuit. After working through the many creative difficulties and financial set backs that accompany the making of a film, a filmmaker must face the challenge of trying to sell it. Wagner notes that it is often disillusioning to have a personal expression that no one is willing to distribute. Winter believes this can often be one of the process' most depressing stages, and that "most first-time filmmakers are going into it [the festival circuit] without that knowledge." With the proliferation of independent films, festivals like Sundance may receive upwards of 1,000 films. Out of that, only around 20 will be shown, making the process extremely competitive. Once in a festival, filmmakers face enormous challenges marketing their films to buyers. Winter recalls that she did not understand what was going on when the first festival came and went and her film was not picked up. However, she now sees that the festival circuit is a long, and often upsetting process, as distributors typically track the response to the film throughout the festival circuit while they have a free test audience. In spite of these difficulties, Winter optimistically stresses that everything is just part of the process of filmmaking. She believes that "fortitude is an important attribute, one of the most important aside from making a good film," and that one must be aware that the path is long and slow; nothing is ever immediate. Hailing from Virginia, both Wagner and Winter are pleased with the direction in which the state is moving in the film industry. Especially for beginning filmmakers, having more films shot locally will allow newcomers who cannot afford to go to New York or Los Angeles to obtain valuable experience. Winter emphasizes that there is nothing in school that can prepare one for actually working on a set and the hands-on procedure of filmmaking. She attributes a great deal of her filmmaking education to crewing in films shot in Virginia. Facilitating this, New Millennium Studios' full-scale production center will not only make Virginia more appealing to big companies but will make the movie making process much easier for local filmmakers. Wagner emphasizes to anyone who is starting out in filmmaking that the script is key. Not only can it be done for free, but there are opportunities at competitions held by the state, like the Governor's Screenwriting Award. There, one can meet powerful people in the film industry and try to become another instant success story, like Vince Gilligan, who won the Governor's award for his script for Home Fries. It was directed by Mark Johnson, stars Drew Barrymore, and will be screened at the Virginia Film Festival. In nurturing our own budding U.Va. filmmakers, Wagner emphasizes the great wealth of literary talent and potential many students possess. He points out that Clemons Library has a great collection of films that can be accessed for free. He and Winter express their desire to encourage people to develop projects. They emphasize that in spite of all the hardships each faced in making their films independently, the feeling that they were making a difference in creating something unique made the entire process satisfying and worthwhile.

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