I’ve been to the Woodstock Film Festival — a festival that lives up to its “fiercely independent” motto — for 16 years now. As DIY film continues to spread across the globe, powered by a growing accessibility to software, cameras and distribution, a need for support from other artists and industry members from around the world has grown, too. Not only have these support systems developed, but also more of them are being formed with missions and causes that artists can come together to work for.
Leah Meyerhoff, writer and director of I Believe in Unicorns, a feature that screened at the festival in 2014, returns to the festival this year as a juror and panelist. In addition, she is also the founder of Film Fatales, a fast-growing film collective for female directors. “Film Fatales is a global network of women directors, who get together every month, in each other’s homes to collaborate on projects, mentor each other, and really build a community in which we can make our films,” she explains.
“It started a little over two years ago now when I was making my first feature film, I Believe In Unicorns, and I reached out to other female directors who had come before me and said, ‘I need some advice, I need some help, I’m about to make this feature, I’m casting an underage actress, you know, can you come over to my house, I’ll make you dinner, and just pick your brains.’ And so six women feature directors came over and I made them all dinner and we talked for about an hour and it was so inspiring. Not just for me, but for all of the women in that room. It is so empowering to just be in a space with other independent filmmakers sharing knowledge and sharing resources, that at the end of that dinner one of them said let’s do this again next month and I’ll host it, and then next month someone else hosted, and it just organically became this rotating dinner party of female feature directors and it spread exponentially. A lot of it has come through social media.”
Film Fatales has grown alongside other film collectives that are smaller and more focused, such as Borderline Films, Court 13, the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, and Film Shop. Meyerhoff goes on to explain that her group helped spawn others. “One filmmaker from that circle in New York, who edited my trailer, went back to Los Angeles to work on a project, and she brought it with her! She started a group there. They now have 1,000 members. So it’s just spreading and spreading, and it’s this DIY mentality… but it’s more like do-it-together than do-it-yourself kind of mentality, and I think you especially see it with disenfranchised groups, or groups that have not been given the same opportunities as those in the Hollywood system. Those independent filmmakers, women filmmakers, people of colour, are finding strength in numbers; strength in collaboration wasn’t possible before.”
“The head of our group in London recently had a screening in New York and two dozen women showed up to support the film and buy tickets and… it’s like fight club… but way cooler because we’re not beating each other up and it’s a bunch of women filmmakers. There is this feeling of collaboration and camaraderie and support in an industry that is so often not the case. It really used to be much more competitive and when I first came to this festival, I think ten years ago, I had a short film and I was one of the few female directors at the festival. I didn’t know anyone, I felt quite alone and overwhelmed and comparing that to now, where anywhere I go, as a filmmaker, I’m walking into a community with welcoming arms. It’s really empowering and inspiring.”
Independent film is developing. The game has changed; it has become increasingly harder to play alone. But along with a social media and technological revolution, we see artists coming together in new and exciting ways to challenge each other, inspire, empower, and push each other to grow and change the system.
3 filmmakers to watch from the Woodstock Film Festival
Paul Dalio transforms pain, terror, and unbearable emotions into in his second feature film; Touched with Fire, whichfollows two bipolar poets, played by Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby, who meet in a psychiatric hospital, fall in love and come to terms with the potential beauty and darkness that their shared condition is capable of evoking. His film partially serves as a metaphor for his own reconciliation with bipolar disorder and how it helped create his identity. A graduate of NYU Film School, Paul hopes that his film will help with the stigma that is associated with mental illness and let those struggling with bipolar disorder know that there is hope. He is currently working on two projects, one independently, the other with his wife Kristina Nikolova.
Adam and Aaron Nee are touring the festival circuit with their second feature film, Band of Robbers, starring Adam Nee, Kyle Gallner, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Hannibel Buress. Band of Robbers takes Mark Twain’s characters Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer into the 21st century. Adam and Aaron both share the same wit that Mark Twain is known for and are now working on a much larger feature film.
Sam Pressman is a hilarious and powerful force in film who pays homage to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo with his new feature Reconquest of the Useless. Sam, along with his best friends, follows Herzog’s epic pilgrimage, carrying a boat over the mountains and into the Peruvian Amazon. In this gorgeous documentary, he brings us along on his journey with his two best friends not just to show us the terrific journey that Herzog and his team took, but more importantly to show that the Amazon isn’t just this “exotic other”, but is filled with people that we are connected to. Sam will continue to work on films to showcase how beautiful humanity is and how people from all over the earth can collaborate with one another.
Credits
Text Adam Rejto
Still from I Believe In Unicorns by Leah Meyerhoff