Here’s a fact: there are too many film festivals. New York City, to take the most local and egregious example, has somewhere in the range of 40 film festivals annually, of varying size and importance. Today, all five boroughs present a film festival except Staten Island (it did, but it closed in 2012, and there are currently cries to bring it back), with Manhattan and Brooklyn seemingly hosting a film festival in every neighborhood.Here’s another fact: Most of these film festivals are not worth your time. The accessibility of film production has been conflated with the accessibility of film presentation: Just because you make a film doesn’t mean it deserves to be shown. Curation now exists only in the best festivals, quality is an afterthought, and the promotion of a vibrant international film culture, one of the unspoken promises of a great festival, is pushed aside in favor of, in some cases, corporate sponsorship and the proliferation of worn-out trends, and in others, gimmicky concepts.BAMcinemaFest, now in its seventh year, has separated itself from the superfluity of film festivals that dominate the city, carving out a unique niche for itself; its focus is ostensibly independent film, but that term is one that has many definitions today. But instead of following the path of Sundance and SXSW, larger but similarly themed festivals that have narrow and often infuriating ideas about what constitutes independent film, BAMcinemaFest is both highly-selective and open-minded.This is highlighted most obviously in the three showcase films of the festival. James Ponsoldt’s “The End of the Tour,” the opening night film starring lumbering funnyman Jason Segel as the late dorm-room-revered author David Foster Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as twitchy former Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky, is based on a well-received if awkward book and will be released in theaters in July. Closing the festival is Sean Baker’s hyper-kinetic “Tangerine,” a made-on-the-cheap iPhone-shot piece of comedic-street-theater starring a largely transgendered cast. Both of these films represent the most rigidly pronounced strands of independent film, existing within the industry-backed Sundance-SXSW bubble. In the middle is Alex Ross Perry’s “Queen of Earth,” the centerpiece film of BAMcinemaFest that has no easy sales hook unless what you look for when you go to the movies is misery.“Queen of Earth” is too acidic and ambivalent to be championed by the audiences of Sundance or SXSW (it premiered at the more adventurous Berlin Film Festival in February), and its inclusion here reflects why BAMcinemaFest is so successful. Concerned with the mental-breakdown of its main character (played with hand-wringing intensity by Elizabeth Moss) and her relationship with her equally tormented friend (played with quiet cruelty by Katherine Waterston), it’s a self-conscious throwback to the claustrophobia-and-paranoia cinema of Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant” (1976) and Jerzy Skolimowski’s “The Shout” (1978), the kind of mood piece whose after-effects are stronger than its initial buzz.Like many of the best films at BAMcinemaFest, “Queen of Earth” deviates from the indie mold. Jem Cohen’s “Counting” and Nathan Silver’s “Stinking Heaven” — the two best films at the festival — achieve their power through a similar means. Both are very different in their approaches but steadfast in their rejection of the pro forma models of what constitutes independent cinema today.“Counting” is Cohen’s wandering tribute to the filmmaker Chris Marker, who died in 2012, and is structured as an essay-film told in 15 chapters of varying lengths. Cohen shot the footage during trips to Russia and Istanbul, and while walking around New York City, where he currently lives (many Brooklyn residents will see familiar landmarks, but Cohen’s camera-eye captures details that go unnoticed). Through his camera he constructs a personal travelogue that also acts as a map of the political climate of the last few years. But the energy of the film derives less from single images than the movement or flow of images. “Counting” reproduces the human experience of walking down the street, of wonder and concern and hope for the future.“Stinking Heaven” might be the flip side to Cohen’s film but no less powerful. Shot on smeared and ugly-looking video, as if the movie was a home-video found in a dumpster after sitting out in the sun for too long, Silver’s misanthropic tale of a sober-living house in suburban New Jersey gone awry is filled with such composed chaos and vicious junkie-bad-vibes that it will leave you feeling a little jittery by the end. Like “Counting,” there is the feeling in “Stinking Heaven” that the world is out of control, whizzing past at furious speeds. But Cohen’s strategy is to pause and grasp what is happening around him, slowing down time through the use of his camera. For Silver’s characters, there is no escape from the maelstrom, only embrace or demise (or maybe both at the same time).Some films are no less idiosyncratic, even if they exist within, or mimic in specific ways, the kind of independent cinema they are at the same time disavowing. Nobody can claim Sebastián Silva’s “Nasty Baby” isn’t one of the most bizarre films playing at the festival, even if at first glance it appears to be one of its most bland. The director plays Freddy, an artist from the part of Brooklyn where no artists can afford to live anymore, who is attempting to have a baby with his reluctant boyfriend (TV on the Radio singer Tunde Adebimpe), enlisting his best friend (Kristen Wiig) to be part of the process. But the middle-brow indie-cute hi-jinks turns violent, and callous, and eventually pretty crazy, taking a turn that is surprising and, um, nasty.Jennifer Phang’s high-concept “Advantageous,” a sci-fi mind-bender, delivers on its lofty premise. In a not-so-distant future where corporate power is stronger than ever, single-mother Gwen (played by co-writer Jacqueline Kim) loses her job at a company that promises to eliminate people from the pains of cosmetic surgery by actually placing them completely in a young and better body. Struggling to provide an adequate future for her daughter, she agrees to be the guinea pig for the company that canned her, letting them clone her memories and place them in a new body. The female perspective is refreshing, the emotional content never forced, and the films poses interesting questions about race and gender. “Advantageous” has more in common with Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color” (2013) or Alex Rivera’s “Sleep Dealer” (2009), indie-sci-fi that uses the genre to confront political questions shaping the present day. Take a look at the marquee at your local multiplex any given weekend and you’ll be reminded how independent this truly is.But ultimately, if we’re talking about independence, we can’t leave out “Here Come the Videofreex,” a charming documentary about the trailblazing and largely unknown video-documentary collective who, after forming in New York City in the late 1960s, eventually moved to upstate New York and started their own guerilla television station. The Videofreex continuously did their own thing, and when the money came knocking at their door, they took it. But when it didn’t work out they refused to succumb. The group moved out to the woods and kept working. Fiercely individualistic, oblivious, and even resistant to the channels of mainstream culture, their sprit hovers over independent cinema — both in what it has lost and how it can be found.
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