Mumblecore: The Future is Unwritten

Much is being written about mumblecore at the moment. Wikipedia describes it as "an independent filmmaking movement characterized by ultra-low budget production, focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors."

Alicia Van Couvering writes in a Filmmaker piece quoted over at J.J. Murphy's: “If we were going to generalize, we might say that generally these films are severely naturalistic portraits of the life and loves of artistic twentysomethings. The genre’s ultra-casual, low-fi style has been simmering for the last decade, made possible by the accessibility of DV and inspired as much by reality shows and YouTube confessionals as by earlier American independent cinema.”

Mumblecore, aka Slackavetes, was born two years ago at the South by Southwest Film Festival (programmed by the amazing Matt Dentler), with the simultaneous premiere of three titles: Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation, Swanberg’s Kissing on the Mouth (a response, he’s said, to Bujalski’s 2002 Funny Ha Ha), and the Duplass Brothers’ The Puffy Chair. Hoberman has more at The Village Voice.

The term was coined by Bujalsky's sound mixer Eric Masunaga, as explained in this August 2005 interview with Bujalsky in Indiewire. Today, it seems to be everywhere...

Because of the speed with which such hype takes off, flies and dies with the blogosphere cinerati, the American-born movement is likely to crash and burn before it ever reaches Australia. That may not be a problem, as the hip kids down here are not necessarily film-savvy and they wouldn't know an indie film backlash if it whipped them on the backside. Harsh. But true.

Anthony Kaufman is already writing about how the hype is likely to hurt the films. I'm in two minds about that. One the one hand I don't think that mumblecore will save your life... on the other, while it may be true in the States, out here a little hype around good low-budget indies couldn't hurt. Besides, it's not the term, it's not the movement.. it's the fims, stupid. Mumblecore will likely explode into sharp, creative splinters... grumblecore, ensemblecore, mumblequeer, mutecore...


Another reason why the movement may take a while to reach our shores is that its flagship films are still without distribution here. Apart from Andrew Bujalsky's one-two punch of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation, most of the key Mumblecore titles are still unseen... unless the definition can be stretched to include Me, You and Everyone We Know and Old Joy.

Hannah Takes The Stairs, Dance Party USA, Quiet City, The Guatemalan Handshake, Four Eyed Monsters and LOL - like The puffy Chair - were ignored by all the major Australian programmers (Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane film festivals). We may have to wait for Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park... by which time the term Mumblebore may already have been coined.


Apart from using MySpace to promote themselves, another characteristic these Mumblecore titles have in common is DIY distribution. Some are self-distributed through the filmmakers' website, others are using alternative circuits. Four Eyed Monsters is being made available in its entirety by the filmmakers on YouTube for free.

The Puffy Chair, for example, was a cleverly adopted by DVD-mail-rental outfit Netflix for a 3-months exclusive. Meanwhile, new micro-distrib Benten Films (created by Andrew Grant, aka Filmbrain and Aaron Hillis of Cinephiliac) is launching itself with a Stateside DVD release of LOL on August 28th.

The mumblecorps is arguably an American contingent... (Cinephiliac has a useful family tree). But there's no reason the movement couldn't spread to the UK, Canada or Australia (to start with...). That's where film festivals come in... Following the New Talkies: Generation DIY season, which is on this week at the IFC Center in New York, many Festival should have a think about the merits of programming a Mumblecore strand. Australia missed the boat with its major winter festivals... will it be too late by the time 2008 comes around?

TRAILER PARK:

• Hannah Takes The Stairs
• Quiet City
• The Puffy Chair
• Dance Party, USA
  
• The Guatemalan Handshake
• Mutual Aprreciation
• Funny Ha Ha
  
• Four Eyed Monsters
  
• Four Eyed Monsters (full film)

Update August 25th

• Google buys Mumblecore for $2.9 billion!
• Lowdown on the Hannah premiere in NYC, including Q&A transcript and party pics
• Swanberg also has a band, I'm surprised iTunes doesn't have a "name this new musical movement" competition...

Mumblecore: The Future is Unwritten