A New Independents’ Day

The American Cinematheque recently presented a homage to innovative independent filmmaking titled “Ten Directors to Watch.” The Times invited an eclectic roster of some of that group’s most distinctive voices for a round-table discussion at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Among the topics: the effect of Sept. 11 and new technology on their work, the best way to wrestle ground from the Hollywood studios and whether filmmakers should be involved in promoting patriotic values.

The dialogue brought together “Memento” director Christopher Nolan, 31, and Mexico City-bred Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 38, who exchanged ideas about unconventional storytelling, on display in Nolan’s groundbreaking thriller and in Gonzalez Inarritu’s high-octane meditation on tough love, “Amores Perros.” Gustavo Mosquera, 42, the director of “Moebius,” a 1996 political thriller about Argentina’s missing people, talked about the newly acquired relevance of his work in America.

Writer-turned-director Adam Rifkin, 35, of “Detroit Rock City” fame, who has two new movies under his belt--”A Night at the Golden Eagle” and “Without Charlie”--and no distributor in sight, brainstormed about possible solutions to the Gordian knot of indie filmmaking: finding a distribution channel. Valerie Breiman, who spent five years chasing financing for her 2000 romantic comedy “Love & Sex,” offered to lead “the bitter women directors seminar,” and Swiss-born Marc Forster, 31, took a break from a hectic schedule that includes the coming release of the Billy Bob Thornton vehicle “Monster’s Ball,” to weigh in on the future direction of indies.

Question: How did the events of Sept. 11 affect your work?

Gustavo Mosquera: I struggle with a feeling that events [like Sept. 11] are following me. When I was studying cinema under dictatorship in Argentina, the director of the school was a colonel, instead of a filmmaker. Soon the dictatorship was gone, and I was out of school. I felt that in my country “the missing people” symbolized a lot of political issues. As a filmmaker, I wanted to transpose this unresolved tension on screen in “Moebius.” When I came here, my film was seen as just touching on the politics of a Third World country--but that was before Sept. 11.

Now the term “missing” is suddenly hugely significant for everybody, although not for the same reasons I gave in “Moebius.” There’s been a surge of interest in my film. Many [distribution] companies are asking for a remake, but from the perspective of the missing people in New York City. I feel that the “the missing people” are somehow following me wherever I’m going.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: I lived in Mexico City all my life. In the last 10 years, it has turned into a very difficult city, it’s very insecure in some ways. With fear in your heart you go out every day, and say, ‘Will I come back?’ When you send your kids to school, you always think, ‘Will I see them again?’ There’s always the possibility of kidnapping. I have been a victim of violence in my country many times; my family has been too.... .The good--and the bad--news is that you get used to fear: That’s human nature. So I got used to fear.

I never imagined myself living in the United States, but now I am based here. I arrived 15 days before Sept. 11. I was alone, waiting for my family. And I felt [as if he was] in a different country than now. Shark attacks topped the news, the music on MTV was really depressing. Everything was really superficial, and I was not getting touched as I had been in Mexico City. There, life is horrible, but at the same time, it’s beautiful: You can feel its pulse.

My wife arrived, and four days after that, Sept. 11 happened. It was really terrifying because, like Gustavo, I felt that fear was following me. My wife and I decided that this is the way life is for us, and we cannot hide from that.

Marc Forster: . Society has lost its momentum of living in the now, and we only live in the future. For me as a filmmaker, the journey--being aware of what’s happening in these times--is important.

Q: What kind of obstacles have you encountered in making your films?

Christopher Nolan: The barrier I’ve seen most definitely in independent film is that people who finance and distribute the films continually underestimate the audiences’ desire for something different, for something more. Yet if a new idea succeeds, they absorb it immediately. They say, “Now you can apply that to more films.”

Valerie Breiman: They give accidental reasons for the success of anything new.

Adam Rifkin: Yeah, they say, “That was lightning in a bottle. It doesn’t count!”

Mosquera: I was told that my ideas would not be accepted by people here because I was a foreigner. At the showing of my movie, it was exactly the opposite--they did accept it. But when I’m going into a new movie, I will be battling again the same kind of ghost.

Forster: As a foreigner, when you come here, especially if you make your film about American people, you have to be much more careful and observant. You can be easier to criticize.

Rifkin: I had a challenge that I didn’t expect with this last film that I made. I’ve written some studio films that were successful, and as a result of those writing jobs, I was then able to use the money to finance my own movies. It’s always so hard to raise money for an independent film. I was going to cut out the chasing of the cash, and just write the check myself; I thought that would be the answer to all my prayers. And it made things very easy: I could make the film that I wanted, with the cast of actors that I wanted.... I got to the movie that I wanted. Now I have a finished film, and it’s very hard to get it seen. I’m trying to prove [to distributors], “Hey, look: We’ve screened it for an audience, and they really liked it.” But they say, “That was just that audience.”

Q: What kind of forces are driving independent films now?

Gonzalez Inarritu: The most interesting things are not going to be spurred by technology. In the end, we will be telling the stories with actors. On the other hand, cinema has not evolved in step with painting, for example, or music, or literature. I think the structure and the way we tell the stories in cinema have been very conventional, very straightforward--at least until this guy [points to Nolan] arrived.

In “Amores Perros,” Guillermo [Arriaga, who co-wrote the script] and I were influenced by authors like Jorge Luis Borges or Julio Cortazar, but playing with the structure in films has largely been shunned as too abstract. Little by little, we’re beginning to accept other ways to tell stories. It’s not about the technology: We are changing the real sense of how stories are told.

Nolan: But don’t you think that it is because of technology like home video? Now I can make a film like “Memento,” and people can buy it on DVD and watch it in their home with the same concentration that they have in a movie theater.

Gonzalez Inarritu: I agree. I meant that technological advances that improve the tools of cinema are not that important.

Nolan: Technology is changing things. Something like Tivo suddenly frees you from that linear stream of media that you had to deal with [in the past].

Gonzalez Inarritu: Don’t you think this is because our perception of life is becoming more fragmented? You can be talking on the phone with a guy in London, sitting at your computer, chatting with your mom, watching news from Afghanistan on CNN all at once.

Forster: We’ve come to a point in cinema right now where we’ve already seen everything in terms of conventional storytelling, and I think audiences are ready to break the boundaries.

Breiman: I have this goal, and it may be lofty, to not constantly edit myself to fit a mainstream audience, but take qualities of humanism and realism and bring them to the mainstream.

Q: Do you think that’s realistic?

Breiman: Once you get to a certain amount of success, you can theoretically do that. But I think it’s very rare.

Rifkin: If your last movie makes $100 million, your next movie can be whatever you want it to be; it can be as unconventional as you want.

Nolan: I think the conventional Hollywood filmmaking is becoming broader, which isn’t to say it’s becoming less conventional, but it’s becoming broader--even on a technical level. The films are shot in more different ways than they were 30 years ago. You can talk about “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic”: They’re both studio movies and in the broad mainstream.

Rifkin: I think there have always been pockets of creativity, and maybe there is one going on right now.

Nolan: “Erin Brockovich” is not a pocket, this is a best picture contender that made $100 million; it’s part of Hollywood.

Rifkin: When a guy like Steven Soderbergh gets to a level of success where he can then do something interesting on a wider scale, he can make a lot of money and hopefully open up the door for other people to do it as well.

Mosquera: I don’t believe that any of us wants to repeat themselves. I am a bit concerned about making movies on a large scale, because of the pressure from all of those who will say [gesturing toward Gonzalez Inarritu], “You made ‘Amores Perros,’ and you made it so well, please do the sequel!” And I don’t’ believe we are the kind of people who want to repeat ourselves.

Nolan: I’ve just been finishing my film, and I’m lucky because I’ve been working in the thriller genre. If you stay within the genre, you can find something different to say, but broadly speaking, you are still in the same genre, and that makes people more comfortable.

Gonzalez Inarritu: Now that I finished my new script after two years, I find that I’ve just found another way to tell the same story. I cannot escape my shadow. I don’t know if I am condemned to a repetition of all my obsessions.

Q: President Bush’s advisor Karl Rove recently came to Los Angeles and asked studio and TV network heads to incorporate more American values in future projects. What’s your reaction to this?

Gonzalez Inarritu: If that guy asked me to make a film about the virtues of American nationalism, I would laugh for 30 minutes.

Forster: Do you have your green card yet?

Gonzalez Inarritu: I would probably be laughing on the way back to my country. I think any filmmaker should make movies about what he loves. The nationalistic films should be made by the government.

Rifkin: They’re using the same tactics to sell candy bars and cars: Americana is in. Everybody wants to use the red, white and blue, and the slow-motion shots of the American flag: “We support the war, and this is why we want you to buy more cookies.”

Forster: The most important thing in times like these is that we ask questions, and it feels like you’re not allowed to ask questions.

Inarritu: At the beginning, in the first two or three days, I found that people were saying interesting things. Then--silence. I haven’t seen a lot of questioning about what we are doing in Afghanistan.

If I was the government, I would ask the directors and producers why they didn’t make films about the roots of these problems. Why didn’t they explore this 20 years ago? That would be more interesting.

Rifkin: I would recommend that people watch the Cartoon Network, which I’ve been doing a lot. The news is too depressing, and there are so many good shows on the Cartoon Network.

Nolan: I don’t have a television.

Rifkin: You really should see “The Powerpuff Girls.”