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We love YouTube here at Bostonist. But let’s be honest: serious short-film artists looking to get exposure typically get buried in a sea of RickRolls. All hope is not lost, however; tomorrow night in Harvard Square from 5:30-10, the first annual Le:60 Film Fest will showcase nearly 100 artists who compressed their best ideas into films just one minute long.
The festival will also feature performances by Cambridge-based indie group PANTS YELL! throughout the event, with a full performance (most likely more than a minute long) to cap off the night. Head down to Palmer Street in Harvard Square, look for the giant video screen, and say hello to your friendly neighborhood Bostonist correspondent—we will be there, as we are everywhere!
For some thoughts on the event, we caught up with Kate Holcomb Hale, program director at Lumen Eclipse, who brought this free filmmaking fantasy to life.
What inspired the idea for a showcase of minute-long films?
I participated in a 1-minute film festival in grad school. It was an event that even the non-filmmakers in my program took part in. It's much less daunting to create a film that's just a minute in length, especially for people who have never made a film in their life. Lumen Eclipse wanted to create an inclusive event where we could celebrate filmmakers as well as people who are new to the genre or making a film for the first time. That's the beauty of the 1-minute film format.
More with Hale after the jump!
Is the exhibition a way of acknowledging our short attention spans and easily distracted nature?
Well, we definitely were keeping our audience's attention span in mind. The 1-minute film format creates a pace that is never dull. If a viewer isn't a fan of a film, it's over and it's on to the next one. We really like the idea of being able to show the work of close to 100 artists/filmmakers. We typically show just 96 artists via our monthly exhibitions over the course of 1 year. This event was a great way to match that number in just one evening.
If you were able to enter a film in the contest, what would your idea have been?
That's an impossible question! I guess I'd want to enter a film that really utilizes the :60 format or plays with the notion of time. One of the films in the Le:60 Film Fest, "Crossing Times Square" by Sara Blaylock, does an outstanding job of manipulating time and duration in under sixty seconds. I would like to enter a film as smart as this one is.
This seems to be an expression of the way filmmaking is starting to democratize. Is it only a matter of time before the big-budget monopoly begins to fade away?
Filmmaking has definitely become more accessible to the masses via new technology and new and innovative video/film outlets. We're seeing more opportunities for lesser known filmmakers to present their films to an audience via the web, whether it be through YouTube, iTunes, Lumen Eclipse, other curated online galleries and DVD quarterlies like Wholphin. These outlets are not exactly intended to compete with those big budget blockbusters because the lesser known films can stand on their own in these unique formats. I don't think big blockbusters are going to ever fade away completely. If they did, I'm sure we'd miss all those special effects and explosions.
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