Smart, beautiful, independent

The very notion of the “festival of American films” may seem a bit odd, because for an uninformed audience this kind of festival is taking place on our screens all the year round: most of the films released in cinemas are those made in Hollywood, USA.

However, in the New World there exists a different type of films – unknown and varied, that bear no resemblance to the film products that usually flood our screens. Such films are made outside major studios, independently from the all-mighty Hollywood producers. Therefore, the festival in Kyiv has the slogan “Independent films for independent people.” The program of the festival consists of nominees and winners at various levels – seven fiction and eight documentary movies.

Debut film by young director Colin Trevorrow Safety not Guaranteed (winner of the Independent Film Forum in Sundance, USA) will open the festival. The plot is quite bizarre: American newspaper reporters find an ad from the guy who is looking for a companion for a trip into the past. Editor’s office sends them to explore the situation and it ends up with unpredictable things.

Another winner of the Sundance Forum is also a comedy – film Sessions based on autobiographical bestseller by Mark O’Brien featuring brilliant Helen Hunt and William Mersey.

Melodrama California Solo by Marshall Lewy is a life story of a weather-beaten rock musician who decides to become a farmer. However, soon he takes in his car drunk and gets in trouble with the police. As a result, after years of living in Los Angeles he faces the threat of deportation. The film won two awards at the festival in Woodstock: for best editing and the Jury Prize.

The sentimental novel Electrick Children by Rebecca Thomas is also in a way tangent to the topic of music. Rachel a 15-year-old teenager (Julia Garner) grew up in a family of Mormons. Of course, she had never eaten a hamburger or listened to music. Once Rachel finds an old cassette recorder with a blue cassette in it and... gets pregnant. Or at least she is convinced that she got pregnant by what was recorded on the tape. Billy Zane, known to Ukrainian audience from the antihero role in Titanic filmed by James Cameron, played the father of the rebellious girl.

Another family drama The End of Love by Mark Webber is centered on the relationship between a young father and his infant son after the death of the boy’s mother. This is a truly family film: Mark Webber was a screenwriter, director, and producer of the movie, he also played the leading role with his son.

Within the framework of the festival there will be premieres of Ukrainian films, which will soon be hired out to cinemas in Ukraine: The Words and Lawless.

The plot of psychological drama The Words (co-directors: Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, starring Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Irons) is based on the eternal story of borrowed talent. One day a popular writer starts to lose everything because his rise to fame and glory began with a theft of someone else’s novel and this crime is revealed, when nothing seemed to pose a threat to the writer.

The film Lawless brings the audience back into the legendary and mythologized era of the Great Depression and Prohibition. A gang of bootleggers is successfully running an illegal business until there comes a man who wants to reduce their profits. The film is perhaps the central event of the festival only due to its cast: Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Gary Oldman, and others. Besides, the film director – Australian John Hillcoat is famous for his dystopian The Road (starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron) and harsh The Proposition (screenplay by Nick Cave); the famous rock musician was also the screenwriter of the Lawless.

American school of documentary films is one of the most powerful in the world, therefore, the non-fiction films presented during the “Independence” festival are noteworthy.

Woody Allen: A Documentary is a documentary dedicated to the famous director, musician, writer, actor, and New York old timer. Director of the film is not less renowned filmmaker Robert Wajda, who will be the guest of honor at the festival.

Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is about a different legendary figure, Roger Corman, the king of trash movies. He is indeed unique: without having shot even one high-quality movie in his life, he nevertheless brought such stars as Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and Robert de Niro to prominence. They are all featured in the film, but the list of Corman’s students and proteges goes on and on. In fact, the producers of Corman’s World try to understand how he is able to do that by producing only cheap comedies and horror movies.

Social documentaries make up a separate block. Brooklyn Castle is a special education event in its own right. It tells about a city school in which over 65 percent of students come from families with incomes lower than the federal poverty level. Nevertheless, the school has a champion chess team which has won countless chess competitions. How to Survive a Plague by David France is the story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. In its turn, the movie The Atomic States of America (directed by Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce) dispel myths about nuclear power engineering and raise the issue of whether a person can treat atomic energy responsibly. The First Season by Rudd Simons, through cinema verite style, tells about two brothers who chose dairy farming to achieve their version of the American dream.

Pablo, a prize winner at the latest Sundance Film Festival, is about Pablo Ferro once hailed by Stanley Kubrick as the father of the sixties look and the MTV aesthetics. Director Richard Goldgewicht blends documentary and animation elements to tell the saga of this master of cinematographic design. Ferro was responsible for creating iconic opening title sequences for many of the greatest films of the past 40 years, including A Clockwork Orange and Good Will Hunting. He was one of the first people in the world to create a movie trailer.

The Ukrainian theme is also represented at the festival. Events in Lost Town (co-directed by Jeremy Goldscheider and Richard Goldgewicht) span the USA and Ukraine. As he studies his family’s history, an American architect learns about the Ukrainian town of Trochenbrod where his father was born and later miraculously escapes being shot by the Nazis. The man decides to travel to Ukraine, and an ordinary trip turns into the most investigation in a person’s life. First made famous by Jonathan Safron Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated (featuring Eugene Hutz, frontman of the band Gogol Bordello), Trochenbrod emerges before viewers from unique photos and survivor testimonials.