The Vibes Were Good, So New/Next Is Back
Eric Allen Hatch on what's new and next in filmmaking, the Baltimore film scene, and what he's stoked to premiere in year two of New/Next Film Festival.
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Last year, when Eric Allen Hatch put together the first New/Next Film Festival in Baltimore, the intention was for the event to be a one-off. The festival came about after the Maryland Film Festival — which Hatch worked for, as Director of Programming, from 2007 to 2018 — announced that it wouldn’t hold its 2023 edition. Sam Sessa, the Events Coordinator at WTMD and WYPR, called up Hatch and proposed they create a festival to fill the void. “Three months after our initial call, we announced that New/Next was happening, and then we had another three to four months to make a three day, five screen film festival happen,” says Hatch.
Given the condensed timeline under which the festival was created, everything went remarkably smoothly — so smoothly, in fact, that Hatch and the festival’s presenting sponsors, Baltimore Public Media, decided that they’d bring it back regardless of whether the Maryland Film Festival returned in 2024 (which it did).
When Hatch left Maryland Film Festival in 2018, the split was contentious. He’d become frustrated and disillusioned with the path its board of directors had taken it. So, the greatest compliment he received after last year’s New/Next was from filmmakers and audience members who remembered the early, Halcyon days of his time at Maryland Film Festival. “They were saying, ‘This feels like that again,’” Hatch says. “‘This is the first festival we've been to in X number of years where it feels like this temporary utopia community that we're getting to access; where the art of filmmaking is being prioritized; filmmakers are being treated well; audiences are coming out in large numbers with great questions; and everything feels like this pure celebration of film and video.’"
In the following interview, Hatch discusses the factors that contributed to the good vibes, what characterizes the Baltimore film scene, and a few of the titles he’s most excited to show at this year’s festival.
What were some of the things you wanted to replicate from Maryland and what were some of the things you wanted to do differently?
At Maryland, I always put a special emphasis on diverse and emerging voices, first films, filmmakers who are working in the short film space. That's always the most exciting thing to me. I don't like to celebrate the already celebrated. I like to find things while they're fresh. While I'm holistic and omnivorous in my love of film and certainly have seen a lot of the franchise films and such, as a festival programmer I really want to be dedicated to finding the new.
One aspect of Maryland Film Festival I didn't replicate is the panels and conferences. New/Next was just movies and parties. And as far as campus goes, we were under one roof, using the whole of the Charles Theater, which has five screens. And all of our other events, the parties and filmmaker lounge, were on the same block. And I really love that. Maryland had that in its early days. It used to happen at the Charles Theater. But when that relationship went askew and Maryland built its own theater and had a transition period where they sort of had a campus all over the city, some of that center of gravity was lost. And I think some audience, too. When everything's in one theater you can see three or four movies in a day and still have meals and take a walk and socialize. Whereas if you have to zip around town, everything feels a little more strained and hectic and you're probably going to see fewer movies.
You mentioned being excited about finding the new. You've been doing this for a long time. Over the past few years, what do you see as being new in what's new?
I think that film culture always renews itself and there's always new energy there. And the differences can be small if you're not really in the trenches with it. I don't know if this is completely applicable but I think of a quote from John Waters often where he essentially says "If you want to be a rebel, don't go after your parents' generation. Go after the cool kids five years older and do something that's different and better than what they're doing." And I think there is a film scene that's bringing that energy. Whatever their vision of what 2015 or even 2020 cinema looked like, they're attacking it in their own way and building something new.
But as far as any specific trends, I think that really the most exciting thing about cinema, and even society, right now is that even though politically we seem to be in such a dark time, culturally things seem sort of wide open. And there's so much representation, whether it's people of color or trans people. People who weren't able to tell their stories are able to do so more and more. And that just makes everything more interesting. There were so many years of film history where the type of person who could get behind a camera and tell a story felt kind of monolithic and homogenous and then there was a transitional period where film festivals and very DIY underground cinema were interrogating that idea and making changes, but the marketplace hadn't caught up. And there's still a lot of work for festivals and the marketplace to do. But the work that an adventurous viewer or film programmer can see now is so much more diverse than it used to be.
When you talk about filmmakers attacking a 2015 to 2020 film culture, what does that film culture look like to you? And how are they pushing against it?
There was a period where just because of technological innovations you had the very raw DV era of, for lack of a better word, the mumblecore “movement.” That was maybe a 2005 to 2012 kind of thing. And then there was this period where I think technology advanced so quickly that everyone was going digital and everyone was trying to visually replicate the beauty that cinema had traditionally conveyed on film. And this isn't monolithic. But a lot of people could do this for the first time, so a lot of people were doing that. And I think that now there's sort of two things happening simultaneously. One is that people are exploring different kinds of beauties you can only access through digital — because we've seen we can make a film that produces Terrence Mallick kind of effects on digital now (not saying the quality is completely the same). But what can you do with digital that you could never do with film? I think some people are starting to find some answers to that.
And I think some people are also dipping into the past. A lot of people are making films shot in outmoded technologies or shooting in 16mm and trying to find their own voice and stand out with different modes of production that would otherwise perhaps fall by the wayside.
Do you have examples of films that are doing things with digital that you could only do with digital?
Any film shot by Sean Price Williams that is not on film. I think there are certain people who have an eye and an intuitive sense of what different kinds of cameras and lenses can achieve that can be really liberated by something like how many pixels there are in the best digital cameras in the world. I think Sean is one of those people.
In 2018, you wrote about why you were feeling hopeful for Filmmaker Magazine. I'm curious if you look back at that, what's changed in your thinking in terms of where things are at right now?
I think that my positions and outlook haven't changed all that much. In that essay, when I was speaking on a personal level, I was saying I would never work for an organization where I don't know the money people and the board members personally. That happened to me in Maryland and in the end it was a disaster. And I had to compromise that a lot just to stay alive and make a living as a film programmer for a few years there. But my belief that you should work with people who are passionate about film and are good at the job never wavered. And now I'm able to do it for the first time and it's as wonderful as I thought it would be.
As far as the state of film as an art and commerce, the marketplace is clearly falling apart and corporations keep making the wrong decisions. But the art form is arguably more vibrant than it's ever been. So there's that disconnect there. And that's where a good film festival can come in handy. Because if you're bored by what you're seeing, you need an event to recharge and remind yourself, "OK, what I see at the multiplex isn't the truest reflection of what people want to say and the beauty they want to put up on screen these days."
I've been struck by how these last few years these mini festivals or events like yours and the L.A. Festival of Movies have been popping up and celebrating what is cool and next. How do you see a local film festival being able to ripple outward and make waves?
The way you do that is by delivering a better experience. To a large extent, that means delivering more interesting and diverse movies. But it also means making sure people know that it happened and know that it can happen elsewhere.
I wasn't able to attend, but I love the L.A. Festival of Movies. I believe I'm on their advisory board, which just means I had a couple calls with their founders as they were considering doing it. It's clear that L.A. has such an amazing film community, and yet there's a disconnect in terms of what those creative artists can go and see on the weekend. There's the films they want to make and then the films that are available for them to watch in theaters. So there was an obvious gap that the L.A. Festival of Movies wanted to fill. And that's similar to the gap I want to fill here in Baltimore. Baltimore has some great theaters, but so many movies miss us throughout the year.
In any community, it's going to be different — you're going to have to look and see what exists that we're not able to access. But if you bring filmmakers to town and the curation and the experience is on point, they're going to bring that energy back to their community and that's going to have this ripple effect on the whole world of filmmaking. Because there are certain festivals that are well established but are not particularly filmmaker friendly, which are chasing red carpets more and more, and are getting in bed with bad money interests more and more, and filmmakers need other alternatives.
I'm always interested in scenes that pop up in different areas. And I feel like I've been hearing about Baltimore for a long time and how it's this great film scene. I'm wondering if you could tell me more about what that means, what it looks like, what characterizes it, and what's happening there?
I think the film scene that we have here is sort of parallel to the music scene we've had here. In Baltimore, we've had artists like Beach House and Dan Deacon and Future Islands and others make a splash. And in most cases, they've continued to live and work here. And Scene Building 101 is really when an artist doesn't move to L.A. or New York, but puts down roots and continues to be an example where other people say, "OK, Baltimore is a valid place to live and to meet other people who are doing interesting work." John Waters is the most obvious example in the film world. And he's someone who is a citizen of the world, but his primary residence is still here, and he refuses to shoot films he directs outside Baltimore. That's a very strident example of how to put your city on the map.
In more recent years, there have been a slew of filmmakers who have done interesting work but there aren't a lot of people doing mainstream-aspiring work in Baltimore. Most people who live and work here are people who are really interested in hybrid or creative nonfiction filmmaking. Although Theo Anthony no longer lives here, he was maybe the primary exponent of that for a while. There was Rat Film and All Light, Everywhere, which made a splash on the festival circuit but were certainly hugely influential films here. And then you have Albert Birney, who I know you're familiar with, and Marnie Ellen Hertzler, with her film Crestone and her short films that are also sort of creative nonfiction, video art, these sort of hybridizations of alternative form. And other artists that are exploring similar areas who live in town include Karen Yasinsky, whose work is experimental and animation all at once; Jimmy Joe Roche, who does these very confrontational video art and short films that kind of have one foot in Maya Deren and one foot in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's these kinds of filmmakers who can be underground but cerebral at the same time that really seem to be making a mark here and staying here and inspiring other people.
Does that have to do with something about what Baltimore is like?
I think it does. There are areas in Baltimore that are gentrifying. But in general, Baltimore is a city that changes more slowly than most American cities as far as the zoomed out picture goes. It's still a fairly roughly hewn city with a lot of economic disadvantages compared to other cities. But to my mind — and this is romanticization to a certain degree — there's kind of this continual New York in the '70s and '80s kind of feel to it. If you're not trying to go to a posh, gentrified place like New York or L.A. — or as far as proximity goes, D.C. — this is your better choice to live and work as an artist. It's not the same as it was in the '90s. In the '90s, you could wait tables maybe one day a week and do your art the other six. It's gotten a little harder, but it's still possible. Whereas in other metropolitan areas even reasonably successful artists are getting priced out. As one example — and I don't think priced out necessarily describes his situation — the documentarian Sam Pollard moved to Baltimore. And this is the editor of some of Spike Lee's best movies, and he directed MLK/FBI and stuff, but for him and his family it's like, "Well, we could be doing OK in Brooklyn or we could live like kings in Baltimore."
What are a few things in this year's lineup that you're really excited about?
One of the things that was most exciting to me was that we do have some world premieres even in the realm of features. We have I think over twenty six world premiere shorts. But we also have features like Softshell by Jinho Myung that is world premiering with us. This was a film that was entirely off my radar that was just submitted. It's a film about two Thai American siblings whose mother has passed away. They're reconnecting and grieving with each other in this early point in having experienced separate adult lives. It turns into this whole other film about them checking in with each other and them finding this common denominator about their Asian Americanness being fetishized by other people in their lives. The primary aesthetics of it I was comparing to Andrew Bujalski and the early work of Wayne Wang. And the filmmaker let me know that that was spot on, which was exciting. But another reference you can see is Kim Ki-duk, in that there's some very provocative and important commentary in the film about the human-animal relationship. And there's one scene we're doing a trigger warning on because there's an unexpected scene of animal violence that is really impactful and says a lot. And you might not expect to encounter it in a film that's otherwise a sixteen millimeter twenty-something indie story. So it's a complex brew of a film that's one of the most satisfying and also freshest things I've seen in a while. And I was shocked that the world premiere was available.
And it was special that Albert Birney's short, Gruenfeld, was available to us for a world premiere. Albert's a hugely productive guy, so I didn't know if him saying he had something we could world premiere would mean that it was a one-minute animation or something. It's always interesting work from him. But you don't expect to get this fully formed, shot on film, tonally very different work from him that at the same time is clearly a product of his singular voice. And that was such a thrill. I was like, "Dude, you probably could have premiered this at a very established festival."
And a really special film that's not a world premiere for us that I'd shout out is Jimmy. When I saw it in the call for entries, at that point it hadn't been programmed by anyone. Although, it did play Telluride and is playing New York Film Festival, I think this week. But it's this sort of impressionistic portrait of James Baldwin's early travels outside the U.S. And that surge of liberation and curiosity that comes from — even if race is very much a factor for him anywhere he goes —- being liberated from the very specific gaze of prejudices that come with being Black in America. And the film is made by a filmmaker who was primarily a photographer first, and it shows. It's an image-driven film and narrative is distilled to the bare minimum, which when done right is something I enjoy very much. It's just a film of pure images and feeling.
Listings
Stephanie Ibarra recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for her upcoming film Todo el Tiempo en el Mundo, which is shooting in Chile this December! The campaign will be live until October 24th. Help fund the film here and follow the film on IG @todoeltiempofilm.
"OFF-VIFF," a platform for the underground, is coming up in Vancouver on October 7th. It will be celebrating the Circle Collective film King Baby alongside the shorts Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded and B.I.I.R.D. W.A.T.C.H.E.R.S.
A film called Bet On It is casting two roles: Bella (24, F, a witty, exhausted romantic who dives headfirst into any challenge) and Kai (25, M, a charming yet cynical dater, who uses humor and detachment to makes his frustration with love). Email Yasemin Cobanoglu at yc5084@nyu.edu.
A non-union NYU student film called I Love Her But Like! is casting Nora (18, supporting female, bold, outspoken, self-assured) and Valeria (18, supporting female, bubbly, vivacious, loyal). Rehearses Oct 4 and 5, shoots Oct 12 and 13 in NY. Email iloverbutlike@gmail.com for more info. Include headshot, resume, and reel.
No Film School recently published a massive list of fall film grants, labs, and fellowships. Check it out here.
Voice actors needed for a short animated thesis film (paid) about a boy who witnesses a woman fall from the sky and must help her deliver a star before her curse consumes her. Deadline for submissions is Oct 7 at 5pm. More info and link to apply here.
Jacob Kessler is looking for unedited fiction and nonfiction short films for his students to work on at University of Iowa. Email jacob-kessler@uiowa.edu
Neighbors, a documentary series, is searching for unique ongoing neighbor/neighborhood disputes and interesting stories. Email HelloNeighborsTV@gmail.com.
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