Thirty Something: Independent Film & IFP Evolve. But, What’s Next?

Michael Moore at the Independent Feature Film Market. Photo courtesy IFP.

Pierson’s 1995 book “Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes”  follows the lives of some of the films that did make it, but this off balance ratio of success and failure couldn’t have been what the IFP founders had in mind when they created the organization and the market event.

The Beginning

At the very moment in the 1970s that the modern tentpole Hollywood blockbuster was born with the releases of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” and George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” American independents sought to foster a community, lure an audience, and hopefully create a business for films made outside the dominant studio system of that time. In short, independents were talking about how to start an American independent film movement.

In the shadow of Robert Shaye finding success releasing edgy genre films by John Waters at independent New Line Cinema and John Cassavetes taking “A Woman Under The Influence” out to theaters in the ‘70s, the Independent Feature Film Market and its parent organization, the Independent Feature Project (IFP), were formed. They grew out of a moment when international art films were hailed by film festivals and embraced by critics, and maverick directors such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Francis Ford Coppola were adopted by the Hollywood studios. Yet, a group of American independent filmmakers, rooted in ‘60s activism and telling stories by and about people often on the margins of society, felt like they were left on the outside looking in.

In the mid-70s, Jeff Lipsky, who would later found October Films with Bingham Ray, ushered Cassavetes’ “Woman” to theaters and later did the same for Ray and Joan Silver’s “Hester Street,” while documentary directors Babara Kopple (“Harlan County U.S.A.”), Peter Adair (“Word is Out”), and Julia Reichert (“Unions Maids”) also employed D.I.Y. strategies. In the wake of these DIY marketing initiatives, and inspired by the film production collectives Cine Manifest and Focal Point Films, Sandra Schulberg became the catalyst for filmmakers who wanted their films seen by paying audiences in movie theaters, rather than museums. “We wanted to offer an alternative to the studio films in the same theaters where Hollywood movies were shown.  Essentially, we plotted an invasion,” Schulberg explained, and that required a precise strategy.

They felt locked out, so the filmmakers strategically developed a plan to support their grassroots goals. Building the movement from the ground up, the filmmakers sought to engage the press as a way to build audience interest and create a demand for their work, and they worked directly with theater owner, bypassing independent distributors who were mainly interested in foreign films at the time. They also forged business bonds with international buyers who acquired their work at the newly established IFP market event, which has long been held in September.

“We approached it like a community organizing effort,” Schulberg said, noting that their targeted efforts in specific regions of the country ushered in a crop of promoters and reps who would continue to work in the new American independent film community for years, including Jeff Dowd and Janet Cole.

“These movies we were making were part of a struggle,” explained Warrington Hudlin, a film producer and concurrent founder of the Black Filmmakers Foundation, who, along with others joined Schulberg at the start of this new independent movement.

Reluctantly, the venerable New York Film Festival paved the way. The event, which opens typically in late September, brought the French New Wave, Italian Neo-realism and New German Cinema to discerning Manhattan audiences, and gave credibility to a small crop of new American independents in a 1979 festival sidebar at Lincoln Center, including Robert Young’s “Alambrista,” Richard Pearce’s “Heartland,” Haile Gerima’s “Bush Mama,” Mark Rappaport’s “The Scenic Route,” John Hanson & Rob Nilssons’s “Northern Lights,” and Victor Nunez’ “Gal Young ‘Un.” Outside of that sidebar, Schulberg booked an alternate venue to screen more films, including work by Andy Davis, Jan Egleson, Eagle Pennell, as well as Martha Coolidge’s “Not A Pretty Picture” and Hudlin’s “Street Corner Stories.”

“We as a group felt that we were telling stories that were never going to be told by the studios,” Hudlin explained. “Yet we were convinced that there was an audience for these films.”

“The films in this special program are part of a growing independent American film movement, linked together not by any single artistic or political point of view, but by a common insistence on the freedom to explore a wider range of feelings and ideas than is normally possible in the commercial film industry,” Schulberg and Miles Mogulescu of The Film Fund wrote in program notes to 1979 New York Film Festival attendees. “If there is a common thread running through them it is a commitment to an American cinema that mirrors the diversity of American society, that is entertaining while being provocative, that combines technical quality with an awareness of the issues of the day, that comes from the land and the stories of its people rather than from a dream factory.”

The Angelika Film Center during the IFP Market in 1996. Photo courtesy IFP.

Notable Narratives

In the early ‘80s, the independent films of the moment were coming out of New York and many were getting their start at the IFFM. The Market was a proving ground for a number of notable American indies. In 1980 is was Louis Malle’s “My Dinner with Andre,” while years later, Joel and Ethan Coen emerged with their acclaimed first feature “Blood Simple” and in 1986, Jim Jarmusch scored with his early feature, “Down by Law.”

Particularly noteworthy in the history of the event was its intersection with foreign sales agent turned filmmaker Whit Stillman. In a conversation, he recalled the early ‘80s Market screenings at the Plaza Hotel as an “elegant affair.” Working as a seller for Spanish films, Stillman hung out at the event hoping to poach buyers from the Market. He later brought Fernando Colomo’s “Skyline” to the Market and found success shepherding the movie to the New Directors, New Films series and scoring a stellar New York Times review.

But, it was a few years later that Stillman found personal success at the IFFM. His acclaimed New York indie, “Metropolitan” wasn’t an immediate hit with buyers at the event, but a PBS scout liked the movie and the director scored a deal with Lindsay Law’s American Playhouse, allowing him the funds to get his film out of DuArt and take it to a festival. He subsequently carved a path to success via Ira Deutchman and New Line, eventually inspiring the launch of venerable ‘90s specialty division Fine Line Features (which ultimately morphed into the late Picturehouse).

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