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| עתונות >> השיבו את הקולנוע לידיכם | |||
Take Back the Cinema Don't give up your power! / Sandi Simcha DuBowski Too many filmmakers who spend half a day lighting a scene, years following characters, and months in the editing room abdicate all power when it comes to distribution and exhibition. They wrongly believe it cannot be as creative, engaging, and passionate as filmmaking. Instead of being involved in their film's distribution, they expect someone who does not know their film's issues intimately to know how to grow it into the world. Why birth the baby if you do not feed it when it is born?a At this critical time, when the theatrical situation is so dire for independents films, and especially for documentaries, filmmakers must engage in distribution, not abandon their films on distributors' doorsteps. In the past decade, an alarming trend has risen‹movies open wide and fast and then get quickly slapped into home video. Harry Potter outstripped all previous records, opening in 3,672 theaters on one weekend. The top ten widest opening weekends occurred in the last three years. This 3,000-plus club endangers our communal cinema spaces where we as filmmakers and audience members can come face-to-face. Films are forced to be profitable in this new perform-fast-or-die distribution culture, before any film other than the most generic can find its audience. Films using word-of-mouth marketing, that need time to grow, are left in the dust, clouded by a barrage of high priced advertising.a These three-thousanders affect all filmmakers. In Miami Beach, my documentary about Hasidic and Orthodox gays and lesbians, Trembling Before G-d, was removed from the screen just before Passover this year. This decision was not about profitability; Trembling ranked high among the sixteen films playing at the theater. It wasn't about politics; Miami's large gay/lesbian and Jewish communities were extremely supportive of the film. Trembling was removed because Regal Cinemas, the Knoxville-based company that owns the multiplex, has a relationship with the studios to protect. On that particular weekend, a studio needed to open one of their megamovies on 3,000 screens. Trembling was playing on one of those screens.a We live in a nation where theater chains are not accountable to the communities they serve. As filmmakers and audience members, we accept our lack of power over these cultural, spiritual palaces, the cinemas. It is time to wake up. If we want voices of insight and debate heard and valued in a culture of corporate consolidation and merger, we must get smart. One and a half million movie tickets are sold every year in the US at approximately 35,000 theaters, and we still do not see cinemas as a traditional place of social activism. They are a powerful venue. We need to use these spaces. Filmmakers need to start seeing their distributors as partners so that their films do not fade. We must become the active element in making the difference between distribution that creaks its way across a few cities and distribution that creates a power surge as a film electrifies and galvanizes whatever ground it touches.a Artists and filmmakers must be encouraged to pursue the cultural, social, and profitable ramifications of what they create, not relentlessly asked what their next project is. For over a year, I have been creating a roving town hall in the cinemas where Trembling is playing. We're fusing a mass commercial release with social-change community organizing. And it's working. Trembling has already grossed over $750,000, with many more cities left on our schedule. At New York's Film Forum, we broke the opening day box office record and are the third longest running film. By 2003 Trembling will have played in over eighty US cities. So far we have done over 300 dialogues, events, Shabbats, and discussions with organizations across faith, sexuality, age, racial, and Jewish denominational lines in cities from Los Angeles to Nashville. And we have received a number of foundation grants and individual donor gifts to support this work.a As filmmakers, we must relate to our finished films as social entrepreneurs and creatively strategize their movement in the world, not just to maximize our theatrical releases. This winter, Working Films and I are touring Southern Christian seminaries, from mainstream divinity schools to Pat Robertson's and Jerry Falwell's universities. Not exactly a profit-making venture, but the tour will generate press attention, foundation support, and activism in a region where theaters rarely show documentaries. This exposure will drive home video sales and nontheatrical bookings, which are truly a documentarian's bread and butter.a As artists and entrepreneurs, we must leverage power we may not even know we have. The power to foster engagement, not just entertainment. We must create new models of distribution, not just mimic the strategies of Hollywood's corporate studios. I am not about to create Hasidic, gay action figures and do tie-ins with McDonald's or Moishe's Deli to help propel Trembling.a Sandi Simcha DuBowski is a New
York-based filmmaker and writer. His |
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