What the First L.A. Festival of Movies Proved
What the First L.A. Festival of Movies Proved
Founders Micah Gottlieb and Sarah Winshall reflect on a successful first edition of their new festival.
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When Micah Gottlieb and Sarah Winshall set out to start the Los Angeles Festival of Movies — which held its first edition early last month — they had a few goals in mind. “I think for both of us, we were interested in creating a festival that could represent and platform the kinds of independent films that we felt were often overlooked or didn't get the same platform in L.A. as they might in other cities, like New York, where there's a larger press and media apparatus around independent film and arthouse film festival culture in general,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb and Winshall had both been championing these sorts of arthouse and independent movies in Los Angeles through Mezzanine, a screening series and nonprofit organization Gottlieb started (and on whose board Winshall, a prolific producer, serves) two years ago. The series’ popularity — and the lack of an L.A. equivalent to New York’s New Directors / New Films and First Look festivals — motivated them to take the leap to doing something a little bigger.
But at the same time, they wanted to retain the communal and cinephilic ethos of Mezzanine — to not have the festival be industry-facing, and to not even have it feel too much like a festival. “We thought it was important to have a festival that was free of the industry market distractions that tend to color the film culture of L.A., and also to create a space where people could socialize and move in and out of the event space,” Gottlieb adds.
So, how’d it all go? With a month of distance separating Gottlieb and Winshall from the event, I checked in with them. They described what went well (spoiler: just about everything), what they’d like to do differently next year, and how they view the future for the small movies they’re showcasing.
I'm curious about the film scene in L.A., and how you guys are both reacting to it and shaping it with this festival.
Micah: Right now is maybe the best time to have ever lived in L.A. if you are a cinephile. Especially since COVID, there are all these new venues that have popped up like 2220 Arts + Archives, Los Feliz 3 programmed by the American Cinematheque, the Vista, the Academy museum, Vidiots, and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. I think that now you've seen a real spark of venues east of Hollywood that have cropped up that are really serving this niche. And I think especially with the Los Feliz 3, now you have full time repertory programming in a neighborhood that's full of young people and local bars and restaurants that are in walking distance, which is unusual for LA. So I think that has done a lot to color and enhance the appetite for revival and independent cinema.
And I think that on the other side of things, venues like 2220 Arts are spaces where you have this kind of interdisciplinary approach to exhibition, where not only do you have independent film screenings like Mezzanine and Acropolis and L.A. Filmforum and Rotations, but you also have experimental music shows and literary events in the same space. I think now there's more opportunities for cross-pollination in L.A. between the so-called art world and literary world with the world of cinema.
Have you noticed ways that that comingling and all these venues popping up has influenced the films and the filmmaking?
Sarah: I don't know if it is impacting the films or the filmmaking yet, but I think there is a slow trickle back or echo in the types of releases that are becoming more popular, which in some ways is very exciting and long overdue, which is that we're seeing a lot more of these tours or self releases or individual screenings. Or tiny weird movies playing for a week at the Laemmle or things like that. There's always been spaces like that and films like that in all kinds of cities, and here in L.A. as well, but there was a notable gap in time when it was very very hard to find a place to premiere something, like what Dogleg was doing where they toured the film around. And now there's just a huge plethora of places for something like that to happen. Like what's happening in New York with the Roxy and Spectacle and being able to do something a little bit smaller and maybe be able to do a couple different runs a few months apart, we're starting to get that as well because the spaces have popped up.
I've observed those things you're describing happening as well. And it seems like there's a very exciting energy around these spaces and these tours. But Sarah, as a producer, does it feel like this is paving a new path at all to a more sustainable future for these very small movies?
Sarah: I wouldn't say it would be paving a path to something more sustainable. There was that article I think last year in Esquire —
I wrote that article.
Sarah: Oh, you wrote that! [Laughs.] Yeah, so your article in Esquire was great in that it highlighted all these amazing filmmakers and stuff. But our big concern — because I worked on several films that you mentioned — was: Are studios or financiers going to see this and think they can give us less money? Because now we're saying, “look at all the great stuff that's happening, we're so excited that we have this whole new world of microbudget cinema, and people are into it and, look, you don't need a lot to make something.” But then we were like, “Yeah, we don't need a lot to make something once, but that's not a living.” None of the movies that were highlighted in the article were movies that anybody could do more than once because we're all going broke doing this. So the concern I have right now is, yes, it's great to get movies out there and it's great that people are seeing them and that these microbudget and unusual art things are finding a life, but what I'm seeing is that instead of the industry as an entity rising to the occasion and saying "Wow, look at all this great work these people are making for so little, let's meet them and bring them in and give them an opportunity to do it," instead the concern is now it's like, "Look at all these things these people are willing to do for nothing. Let's get them to keep doing that." And that's the rub.
For us, part of the goal of the festival was to show an industry that's pretty stuck in its ways that there's an audience and a market that will pay for films that aren't traditionally considered commercial, and ideally the goal is then to encourage the people with the checkbooks and the gatekeepers to expand in their mind what they think of as commercial.
That concern is something I've been wondering about a lot since writing that piece. I don't know if you also read that big piece in Harper's that came out recently, but that piece was so dispiriting about the reality inside the industry. So more and more, I've been wondering if there are sustainable ways to exist outside of it, but I guess maybe not [laughs].
Sarah: I think right now there are just not sustainable ways to exist in or out of it at all, until we start changing what our definitions of success looks like. Which is part of what Micah and I trying to do. It's not that we have grand aspirations. But we're excited to show people that audiences are smart and interesting.
I'm curious about the ways you think you might be able to change people's ideas of success. But also, I just want to ask: How did the festival go functionally in terms of proving that point?
Sarah: Well. [laughs.]
Micah: Yeah, it really couldn't have gone better, I think. Part of what we were inspired by for the festival was the experience of attending many regional film festivals over the years. Places like True False in Columbia, Missouri; Sarah has been to the Maryland Film Festival as well as now NewNext run by Eric Allen Hatch. These were all festivals that we had been thinking about and getting advice from in terms of cultivating something that felt curated and communal.
I think in L.A., the vast majority of commercial film venues here don't have large lobbies or spaces where you can just relax and be social or communal without having to rush back to your car and make the drive home. So I think our festival managed to capture that feeling. 2220 Arts is a space that has a bar that is open before, during, and after every screening. So as people were filing in and out of the space, the energy was really electric. And I got to meet a lot of people I had maybe only emailed with as well as a lot of people I didn't know before. And it was just really wonderful.
Were there other pieces of advice or lessons you got from those other festivals that you were able to put into practice?
Sarah: I think the best piece of advice we got was from someone who said, “Don't start a festival.” I think we've done our best so far not to start a festival. And that’s just by trying to keep our eyes on the prize of this being in some ways a screening series. It's doing what Micah's been doing with Mezzanine already. We're playing movies for an audience. And if we stray too far from thinking of it that way, we could lose our plot, and that would be falling into the traps of what many festivals that have not stayed afloat have fallen into. So hopefully we can keep our feet on the ground and remember that the whole goal of this is to show films that people haven't seen yet that they want to see. So not trying to get too far into the weeds of the things you think you need to do because you're a film festival.
Do you see through lines between the films you’re programming? What were the conversations like in programming?
Micah: I think ultimately we wanted a lineup that felt eclectic and that hopefully would reflect the breadth of what independent cinema is today. Obviously our opening night movie, [I Saw the TV Glow], was an A24 film, it was probably the highest profile movie of the festival, and then the rest of the movies included international arthouse films, DV cam comedies, documentaries, experimental shorts. In addition to new films, we premiered three new restorations of independent films that, for us, reflected the spirit of boldness and self-assurance and risk-taking that we felt united all of these movies.
Our closing night movie, Conner O'Malley and Danny Scharar's Rap World, might seem counter-intuitive as a gala screening — it’s the kind of movie that's incredibly scrappy, it's made among a group of friends, and it's perhaps something that will not get a traditional theatrical release because of its length and the way it looks. But it was exactly the kind of movie that we felt redefines what it means to make a brilliant comedy completely independently, with a team of people who — at least to a certain crowd — are some of the funniest people alive.
Sarah: That's a perfect example of a film where the industry says this is obviously not commercial and shouldn't be sold as a movie. And that's the film I've heard the most people talking about. It's such a no-brainer to a huge audience. And this is how unimaginative thinking ends up getting us in trouble. Everyone says, "We know what a movie is, and a movie is an hour and a half long. A movie is made in 4K.” Or whatever. But we have all these people banging on the door to see this thing. I don't know, seems like a movie to them.
Is there anything you'd do differently next year?
Sarah: I'd like to play the movies more than once so we can get more audiences in.
Micah: I agree with Sarah. I think we want to show the movies more than once and keep spreading the word and finding ways to bring in more and different groups of people.
Are you noticing any other cool trends around things happening right now?
Sarah: There are so many great screening series happening in LA. That's another thing I'd like to do is just find ways to bring in more people operating in the same space to collaborate with.
Micah: Speaking for myself, I have noticed something changing,, having spent time in New York and now living in L.A. again. New York is a city where a lot of the finest American independent filmmakers live and go to the movies, which is often where they meet their collaborators. And those are often the people you run into at repertory screenings. But the last year or two in L.A., I've started to meet a lot of filmmakers, whether or not they're pursuing projects or careers in Hollywood or outside of it, they are actively going to the movies, and they are hanging out before and after the screenings. I'm constantly running into people I know no matter what venue I’m at. And that's an incredibly positive development for L.A., and it adds to the feeling of a community and culture that's developing here.
Was there any feedback that stood out from people who attended?
Sarah: I would say the overwhelming positive reaction stood out. It was surprising, meaningful. I was really moved that there was an industry guy in his 60s who lives on the west side, who feels like he might be one of the few people in his office who really loves cinema and traditions of cinema. He came all the way across town and was so excited about this. And then at the same time, it was a bunch of twenty year olds being like, "Hey, all my friends are here and I'm seeing all the movies I've wanted to see, this rules." So the breadth of audience that came in and felt like they were getting something they wanted was really meaningful.
Micah: And there were people who said to us that the festival felt like it had already existed for years, based on the way that it felt fully formed. So that to us was also meaningful. Our hope is to recapture that and double down on everything that worked next year.
Listings
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