Swamped as I am, I just now got to read the discussions on Wellspring's demise on the blog. I just wanted to chime in with my thoughts:

Anyway, I think one point that seems to be getting underplayed is the role of major film critics in the demise of foreign film. I wrote a piece last year for TNR about that subject, using the National Society choices—the cream of the critics' groups—for best picture and director as a rough guide of how far we've fallen (look at their choices in their first ten years and compare them to the last ten—no contest).

I agree that the key is getting the city-dwelling, college-educated, book-reading, museum-going crowd to see these movies. Unfortunately, that crew invariably takes its cues from the New York Times and the New Yorker and similar outlets, and God knows we can't expect help from Denby and Lane on that front. (To its credit, the Times's film coverage and taste are now vastly superior to what it was when Maslin and Elvis were wasting space there—but the damage done was lasting.)

I hang out with a lot of smart, cosmopolitan, New Yorker-reading folk who couldn't tell me who Claire Denis or Hou Hsiao-hsien or the Dardennes are. (Thankfully, Wong Kar-wai has now entered their consciousness—I can't help but think that that NYT Magazine profile of him from a couple of years ago helped raise his profile in that demo.) It's going to be a challenge getting those people back, but it's not impossible (I hope).

Along those lines, the two most fulfilling pieces I've done to date were my overlooked films lists for The New Republic. It's a real thrill when someone tells me that they went and saw Primer or Kings and Queen—movies they'd "never even heard of!"—on my recommendation and liked it. (Happens rarely, but hey, I'll take it.) I think the crowd we’re talking about can be reached, and they can be receptive to good movies. We just have to keep plugging away, and it's as much bringing them to something like Reverse Shot as it is bringing Reverse Shot into their field of vision (through the Indiewire connection, etc.). (Also, kidnapping Denby would help.)

This is a long way of saying keep up the good work. Rant over.

—Elbert Ventura, Reverse Shot Staff Writer

Aren't the "city-dwelling, college-educated, book-reading, museum-going crowd" the ONLY people going to these films? Isn't that the core makeup of arthouse audiences these days? I really feel like the issue is that we only market to these people. I don't know that I could disagree more; college educated, sure, but museum-going, book-reading, no. This is exactly the group that is utterly useless with regard to box office gross on a large scale. It's an incredibly small group of people, relatively speaking. No one in this country reads books anymore, the way no one in this country goes to see art-films. This is the issue, exactly. It's also funny to me that we - THAT VERY AUDIENCE - could think that we just need more of us. What we need is more of somebody else in attendance.

This scene needs more "color" & youth I think. Or, to put it another way, I think the US indie & foreign film offerings are targeted too heavily to a narrow & aging segment of the Euro-Am/"white" audience, perhaps a left over habit from the glory days of European art cinema in the segregated 50's & 60's. Indie, foreign distro companies & fests should mix things up more, retain the old core & also, at the same time, go for a wider ethnic minority audience, & after youths from all ethnic groups in the US.

Here's a perhaps related post re: race & US indie film fest programming:
http://filmmakingforthepoor.blogspot.com/2006/03/filmmaker-amir-motlagh-sees-negative.html

Sujewa
http://www.wilddiner.com/
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IMHO- The marketing of the foreign and indie films must appeal to more mainstream crowds to flourish and get the new blood/audiences to theaters and buy the DVDs. Not to pooh-pooh high-brow marketing or the efforts of the Wellspring and others, but if the keyart looks like a book cover, it's going to die on the video shelf or get pushed away by more glammy movie releases.

Here's my not-so-new 2¢: people judge the cover, not what's inside. Make the movie posters & keyart more visually appealing and that's the hook for more attention. I've done DVD and film marketing for years under the tutelage of some excellent folk, but even then it's still an uphill effort to attract more people to watch indie/foreign film. Worse off, there are no guarantees, only major major obstacles.

I agree whole heartedly with StayPuft that the core audience of film lovers, city-dwelleing, museum-lovers, etc. can't save indie film by itself. Future efforts have to include marketing to film enthusiasts in rural areas and in the Red States, not just to jaded city folk. (Imagine Laura Bush as a fan of liberal indie film? That'll sell out a theater plus get their NASCAR buddies to tailgate in the parking lot. ;-)

In the 1960s and early 1970s, college-educated cosmopolitans were lining up to see the new Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, etc. I know people who lived through that time who can attest that movies were simply more of a priority for their age group in a way it may not be now. They weren't necessarily film die-hards--they were in a demographic for whom challenging and/or subtitled movies were just another thing to do, along with reading books, going to museums, etc. My argument is that that same demographic these days has lost the challenging/subtitled movie habit, even as they keep reading books, going to museums, etc. Back then, they went to see Cries and Whispers or Blow-Up; their contemporary version now think of Amelie and Hero as the best foreign film can give us.

Perhaps we have different ends in mind. I'm not looking for "box office gross on a large scale." I'm merely looking for something like Kings and Queen, a beautiful, brilliant, and hardly inaccessible movie, to make, say, $2 mil instead of $250,000--you know, enough for foreign film to be a sustainable presence in the cultural landscape. Getting this demo to start showing up for these movies is part of it. I'm sick of showing up at the local Landmark Theaters to see a great movie on opening night and being just one of a dozen people in the crowd. DC may not be a film town, but there's a demo here that should be watching these movies that simply aren't going to them. Getting them back is essential if we want things to change, and I pinpointed the cultural arbiters as bearing the blunt of the blame.

Of course, I only have anecdotal evidence to go by. It worries me that people I know--a fair number of them--who read lots of books, listen to good music, and go to museums ignore Kings and Queen or The Holy Girl when it comes to the local arthouse. An anomaly or something generalizable? I can't say, but I can only go by my experience.

Does this preclude going after "mainstream" audiences? Of course not. But I do think the demo I'm talking about is already predisposed to going back to going to these movies. That's where criticism--good criticism--comes in: to help revive their cinephilia and rid them of tastes cultivated under the sway of unadventurous and powerful critics.

Even if recruiting "New Yorker" readers made sense financially, I can't think of anything more boring from an artistic standpoint. Confining "art films" to upper-middle class yuppies is exactly what is wrong with independent and foreign film distribution, and shows off the profound contempt these companies have for the majority of America. I'm not saying The Intruder would necessarily do well in Missouri at this point in time, but I wouldn't chalk it up to hick-dom. Rather, cultural conditioning, a lack of exposure, a lack of options, of marketing, of critical support in those areas. I agree with what's been said about Brokeback Mountain - if people go to see a movie like that, and because of the press coverage, etc, it brings them to a theatre they might not normally frequent (even a Landmark), a whole alternative world of films can be opened up to them that maybe they didn't know about before or weren't exactly interested in. If someone can get used to reading subtitles, say, through watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (fucking Ang Lee again!), then maybe they won't be so opposed to watching a more difficult foreign film, or at least that one hurdle is out of the way.

It saddened me the other day when someone I know watched 2046 and absolutely hated it. I feel that people only give certain experiences so many tries, and most people tend to lump foreign films together as if they were all the same. He thought 2046 was pretentious, slow, tedious, etc, which means that the next time he hears a foreign film spoken of with high regard, he is going to be that much more weary of seeing it. While if he had loved it, I know he would have gone back to In the Mood for Love, and then who knows from there. What to do about this? I would think all this talk of globalization would help...but maybe not.

For all the smack that gets directed towards Armond White on this blog, he is the only critic who consistantly writes that critics are failing in this regard, yet no one seems to hear him. Give the man his due.