CMJ Film Festival 2009 Preview

(Published in Moving Pictures Magazine) 

The 2009 CMJ Film Festival, newly invigorated with a spirit of ambitious scope and scale, is about to descend on a city of eager, discerning moviegoers, from Tuesday, October 20 through Friday, October 23. Held in various locations in New York City in conjunction with the CMJ Music Marathon, this marks the 15th year of the film festival, but the first under the supervision of Artistic Director Alex Steyermark and Festival Manager Frances Wallace. Over the years, the festival has always appealed to the hordes of music industry folk and Music Marathon registrants, but this year Steyermark and Wallace took aim at diversifying and multiplying their selections and expanding their outreach to lasso in the film industry crowd and the general moviegoing public as well.            

“It’s probably a pivotal year in the film festival,” says Steyermark. “We’re sort of reorienting it going forward.”

This refocusing involves expanding the festival’s program to include 31 films, with screenings split between the Norwood Club on 14th Street and Clearview Cinemas on Chelsea’s W. 23rd Street. The selections range from larger-scale productions like the George Clooney and Ewan McGregor vehicle about psychic special forces operatives, “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” and the festival’s closing film, director Oren Moverman’s moving soldier story “The Messenger,” to first-time features like the Terror Twins’ dark comedy “The Invisible Life of Thomas Lynch” and hard-hitting documentaries like the controversial exposé of Dole Food’s farming practices, “Bananas!”

“The selection is very eclectic,” says Steyermark. “We’re not afraid to put big studio movies in the same program as maybe a little lo-fi but no less passionate music docs.”

In fact, this is the first year the festival has attempted to directly bridge the gap between music and film festival attendees through the content of the films, specifically with the Music Doc showcase. All films in the series — including “Searching for Elliott Smith,” a post-mortem biopic exploration, and “Mellodroma,” a history of the mellotron — will screen in five-hour blocks during the daytime at the Norwood (where the festival’s opening and closing parties – RSVP only – will also be held). And Friday night, the Clearview will hold a “Downtown Doc Double-Bill” featuring “Pardon Us for Living But the Graveyard is Full,” about the prolific if under-recognized band The Fleshtones, and “Kid Creole and My Coconuts,” a memoir of collected footage shot by Adriana Kaegi, the lead Coconut in an ’80s world-fusion band that was truly ahead of its time.

The music-to-film connection is also reflected in the film festival’s two panel contributions. The first, on “Breaking into Film Scoring,” features Nathan Larson, music supervisor for Moverman’s closing-night film, “The Messenger,” as well as Sue Devine, senior director of Film and Television Music at ASCAP, and will be moderated by Steyermark, an impressive music supervisor in his own right (“Malcolm X,” “The Ice Storm”). The second panel, entitled “Déjà Vu All Over Again,” explores the reality of the new film distribution model as it relates to changes already observed in the music industry. The panel, moderated by The New Yorker’s John Seabrook, will showcase authorities from both the film and music industries, including Ira Deutchman of Emerging Pictures, Matt Dentler of Cinetic Rights Management and music industry attorney Nick Gordon.

To access the full schedule of festival films or to purchase advance tickets or passes, visit the CMJ Film Festival website at www.CMJ.com/marathon.

Miss Stacia, Geek Bridezilla

If, hypothetically, a man wanted to marry me today, we would have to become water brothers first. For the growing closer. We'd teleport everyone to San Francisco for a reception at the Museum of Comic Art where the main exhibit would be a Neil Gaiman retrospective, with a display of poster artists who have crossed over into comic books in the adjacent room. (Hello, Tara McP!) The first half of the night everyone would dance to Neo's "Closer," played on repeat. The second half of the night, "Closer" would alternate with "Crazy In Love," for old time's sake. The one slow dance of the evening would be to Taylor Swift's "Breathe," (our wedding song in spite of its melancholy theme) and every person, single and coupled, would be forced to play Snowball in honor of my illustrious bar-mitzvah dancing career. Graffiti artists would decorate our tablecloths and our party favors would be blind box Kozik Smokin Labbits with pictures of the in-love couple's faces taped to the bunnies' infamous buttholes.

My husband and I would don Wedding edition Nikes, and I would wear a white playsuit - something like this:

But whiter, and frillier, and with black tights.

Our invitations would be screenprinted by Kayrock and Wolfy and hand-delivered by Phillipe Petit.

I would throw a bouquet of chocolate-covered bacon to my bridesmaids before Edward James Olmos picked me and my man up in the Galactica to take us on our honeymoon on Caprica, which will have been rebuilt for the occasion and staffed by nothing but shirtless Anders' and red-dressed Model 6's. Our fidelity wouldn't last the week, but neither of us would care.