MoMA's Department of Film, in collaboration with Independent Feature Project (IFP) will screen the five nominees for the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award. The nominees were selected by senior members of the Filmmaker editorial staff and a MoMA film curator. The five nominees represent this year's best American independent films on the festival circuit that have yet to be picked up for theatrical distribution.
Off The Grid: Life on the Mesa. 2007. USA. Directed by Jeremy and Randy Stulberg. With little resources and no electricity, a group of outcasts live their version of the American dream on a sixteen-mile patch of barren land in New Mexico. Beautifully rendered by brother-sister team Jeremy and Randy Stulberg, this documentary explores the lives of the people who make up the Mesa, where police are not wanted and firearms are a necessity. After getting over the bizarre lifestyle decision these people have made, the viewer begins to respect them: people who are not looking for pity or assistance, but just to be left alone to live off the land and enjoy the country they love so dearly. 70 min.
August the First. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Lanre Olabisi. With Ian Alsup, D. Rubin Green, Kerisse Hutchinson, Joy Merriweather. A powerful drama in which old tensions resurface—and a family is torn apart—when a son invites his estranged father in Nigeria back to the United States for his graduation party. First-time feature director Olabisi, who shot August the First almost entirely in his mother's suburban home, is remarkably attuned to the language and behavior of middle-class American life. 81 min.
Mississippi Chicken. 2007. USA. Directed and photographed by John Fiege. The U.S. poultry industry, located in the American South, has been recruiting Latin American workers, largely undocumented, to work in their plants. Communities of immigrants now dot the landscape, but remain susceptible to exploitation and abuse by employers, landlords, neighbors, and the police. The lives of workers are shown through the eyes of those who live in a Mississippi trailer park adjacent to a processing plant. Filmed in Super 8mm, the saturated color of Mississippi Chicken provides a textured glimpse of lives most U.S. citizens know little of, as well as uniquely capturing the shimmering light of summer in the Deep South. 82 min
Frownland. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Ronald Bronstein. With Dore Mann, Mary Wall, Paul Grimstad, David Sandholm. A self-described "troll from under the bridge," the painfully awkward Keith Sontag spends his days selling coupons door-to-door and his evenings trapped in a squalid apartment situated in some particularly hellish outer ring of New York. With the most basic elements of human communication a struggle, Sontag lurches through an uncaring city, attempting to aid a suicidal friend, evict an unctuous roommate, and simply attain some measure of self-respect. With Frownland, Bronstein has made a bold and bracing film that is both a hilarious black comedy and a ragged love letter to an earlier era of independent film. Both the film and its singular hero are raw
Loren Cass. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Chris Fuller. With Kayla Tabish, Travis Maynard, Lewis Brogan. Set against the backdrop of racial unrest in 1996 St. Petersburg, Florida, Fuller's striking debut feature presents a trio of disaffected, angry, and frequently bored teens who yearn for change but mostly just drift and hook up in lonely diners and nocturnal parking lots in this "dirty, dirty town by a dirty, dirty sea." Precisely shot and sound-designed, Loren Cass fully evokes a state of aimless frustration and barely suppressed rage that extends its relevance far beyond its particular period setting. 83 min.
Off The Grid: Life on the Mesa. 2007. USA. Directed by Jeremy and Randy Stulberg. With little resources and no electricity, a group of outcasts live their version of the American dream on a sixteen-mile patch of barren land in New Mexico. Beautifully rendered by brother-sister team Jeremy and Randy Stulberg, this documentary explores the lives of the people who make up the Mesa, where police are not wanted and firearms are a necessity. After getting over the bizarre lifestyle decision these people have made, the viewer begins to respect them: people who are not looking for pity or assistance, but just to be left alone to live off the land and enjoy the country they love so dearly. 70 min.
August the First. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Lanre Olabisi. With Ian Alsup, D. Rubin Green, Kerisse Hutchinson, Joy Merriweather. A powerful drama in which old tensions resurface—and a family is torn apart—when a son invites his estranged father in Nigeria back to the United States for his graduation party. First-time feature director Olabisi, who shot August the First almost entirely in his mother's suburban home, is remarkably attuned to the language and behavior of middle-class American life. 81 min.
Mississippi Chicken. 2007. USA. Directed and photographed by John Fiege. The U.S. poultry industry, located in the American South, has been recruiting Latin American workers, largely undocumented, to work in their plants. Communities of immigrants now dot the landscape, but remain susceptible to exploitation and abuse by employers, landlords, neighbors, and the police. The lives of workers are shown through the eyes of those who live in a Mississippi trailer park adjacent to a processing plant. Filmed in Super 8mm, the saturated color of Mississippi Chicken provides a textured glimpse of lives most U.S. citizens know little of, as well as uniquely capturing the shimmering light of summer in the Deep South. 82 min
Frownland. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Ronald Bronstein. With Dore Mann, Mary Wall, Paul Grimstad, David Sandholm. A self-described "troll from under the bridge," the painfully awkward Keith Sontag spends his days selling coupons door-to-door and his evenings trapped in a squalid apartment situated in some particularly hellish outer ring of New York. With the most basic elements of human communication a struggle, Sontag lurches through an uncaring city, attempting to aid a suicidal friend, evict an unctuous roommate, and simply attain some measure of self-respect. With Frownland, Bronstein has made a bold and bracing film that is both a hilarious black comedy and a ragged love letter to an earlier era of independent film. Both the film and its singular hero are raw
Loren Cass. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Chris Fuller. With Kayla Tabish, Travis Maynard, Lewis Brogan. Set against the backdrop of racial unrest in 1996 St. Petersburg, Florida, Fuller's striking debut feature presents a trio of disaffected, angry, and frequently bored teens who yearn for change but mostly just drift and hook up in lonely diners and nocturnal parking lots in this "dirty, dirty town by a dirty, dirty sea." Precisely shot and sound-designed, Loren Cass fully evokes a state of aimless frustration and barely suppressed rage that extends its relevance far beyond its particular period setting. 83 min.
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