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April 13, 2011
Pioneer at the Ashland Independent Film Festival
That the street below was a main thoroughfare cutting downhill through the beautiful hamlet of Ashland, Oregon was probably a good omen:
I'm currently heading home from three days at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, where last night Pioneer was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Short. It was a fine capper to a wonderful weekend in a quintessentially picturesque town. So lovely the weather and sweeping the scenery that I nearly felt guilty sitting down in the dark to watch any films. Thankfully, such compunction was alleviated by the fact that every film was so well attended by local moviegoers that I was actually shut out of a few of I had on my list.
What I did see, though, was almost exclusively nonfiction. I keep my finger so close to the pulse of narratives that I often forego that other great discipline, and I decided to take the great documentary programming here as an opportunity to correct that. I saw the beautiful Tibetan drama Summer Pasture, the crowd-pleasing Hood To Coast, a handful of shorts and a few older chestnuts like Gasland, whose enthusiastic audiences who cared not a whit about such things as premieres or imminent DVD releases; the communal theatrical experience is clearly cherished here. Not just when it comes to film, I learned, but also the stage - the town had just begun its world-renowned Shakespeare Festival, and I wish I'd been able to stay an extra day or two to catch a performance.
And indeed, when the time came, I was remiss to go. This is one enchanting little festival. A huge thanks to Joanne Feinberg, Cambria Matlow, the festival staff, the jury and the town of Ashland itself for being such wonderful hosts. It's so nice to go to a festival where the residents stop you on the street or in line for coffee to talk to you about your film, because they've actually seen it, and care.
And now an anecdote: I attended a panel on documentary filmmaking, hosted by the estimable AJ Schnack. The focus, loosely, was on subjects, and how they evolve over the course of a production. Now, as with post-film Q&As and any other open forum, I never ask questions on panels. Ever since kindergarten, I've always been too shy to raise my hand. And yet there was something I wanted to ask this time, and as the panel progressed, that question began to burn, until I found my hand hovering, hovering, waiting for just the right moment to shoot up - which it did, finally, and I was called on and I posed my query:
"In so much as you make films as a career, are you able to keep an eye out for new subjects while working on a new project? And after making a great film and maybe playing Sundance or winning awards, does that effect how you look for follow-up subjects, and have you ever begun work on a project that didn't work out cinematically the way you had hoped?"
It was answered with silence. Either my question was a stumper, or I was completely intelligible. I fear the latter. One of the panelists halfway answered part of it and then they moved on, and with that my brief stint as a question-asker ended, probably forever.
Posted by David Lowery at April 13, 2011 1:27 AM