Independent Film and Video in Boston

Abstract

Boston has long had a reputation as a center for documentary work and deservedly so. Avant-garde documentarian Errol Morris, whose latest film Fast, Cheap and Out of Control was screened at The Sundance Film Festival in 1997, shaves a zipcode with Cambridge Documentary Films, established in 1974, whose Defending Our Lives won an Academy Award in 1994. Public television powerhouse WGBH airs programs by Blackside Inc., Eyes on the Prize (1986) and Malcolm X: Make it Plain (1994), while the Harvard Film Archives offers innovative documentary programming such as the recent series Reverse Angle: Approaches to Autobiography in Contemporary Film and Video. Talented documentarians, including broadcasters, academics and independent producers have helped shape Boston's international reputation. For just a glimpse into the diversity of documentarians, production circumstances and projects underway in the area, I attended the April 1997 meeting of the Mass Media Alliance (MMA). MMA is a member organization dedicated to bringing together area media professionals and fostering a climate in which media projects can succeed. The guest speakers included film activists Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich, cofounders of Cambridge Documentary Films. I call them activists because for over 20 years they have been producing original documentary projects that have spotlighted important and often controversial social issues. They have actively tackled issues important to the women's movement, Killing Us Softly (1979) and Rape Culture (1983), and to the gay and lesbian community, Pink Triangles (1982), and their most recent success, Defending Our Lives (1993), took a determined stance of the issue of battered women who kill their abusers. Their current project tentatively titled Turning it Around Transforming Trauma, offers portraits of ordinary people who have become social activists because of personal trauma. Also present was Steven Ascher who, with his wife Jeanne Jordan, produced and directed Troublesome Creek: a Midwestern (1996). An Academy Award nominated documentary that garnered the Grand Prize and Audience Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, Troublesome Creek is a personal and compelling documentary narrated by Jordan that deals with her family's struggle to keep their Iowa farm from being repossessed by the bank. Ascher spoke directly to every independent film and videomaker in the audience as he shared details of the five-year journey it took to finish the project. As Boston continues its tradition of producing nationally recognized documentarians, narrative film production is on the rise. Following on the heels of Edward Burns's success with The Brothers McMullen (1995), independent producers have been able to call on a collaborative environment to pull together their projects. Robert Patton-Spruill, a graduate of Boston University's film program, raised $400,000 from local investors to help produce Squeeze (1997), an urban coming-of-age story about three boys from Boston's tough Field's Corner neighborhood. Working with cinematographer and editor Richard Moos, Patton-Spruill found his film's inspiration and actors at the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, a youth center formed to offer an alternative to gang activity, In addition to screenings in national festivals, distribution rights to the film have been acquired by Miramax, which intends to run a limited national release this coming summer. Thanks to Boston's cooperative atmosphere, such high profile productions are not the only narrative film work being successfully produced and screened. Love, lust and lunatics are all on the menu at .... the Last Night At Eddie's (1997), a collaboratively produced film, premiered at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in February. Home before Dark (1997), a locally produced film by Maureen Foley, was one of many films featured during the Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema in April-May 1997 and Local Sightings, founded by David Kleiler, features a variety of locally produced projects, including The Darian Gap (1995) by Brad Anderson. …