Why lounge on your couch watching the same movies or sit in crowded movie theaters watching over-hyped blockbusters when you could watch quality, artisanal cinema during the 12th annual Indy Film Fest.
This year’s festival is July 16 – 25 at various theatres around Indianapolis and is said to be “10 jam-packed days and nights of cinematic awesomeness!”
“Our mission is to create a shared experience around film, it’s many disciplines and subject matter. I think it’s that diversity that sets us apart from the other festivals,” said Craig Mince, executive director of the Indy Film Fest.
The festival features films from around the globe and ranges from short films to full-length films to documentaries. Mince said of this year’s 100-plus entries, there is truly something for everyone.
Though each submission is special and view-worthy, Mince said each year there is a collection of films the selection committee naturally gravitates toward. This year, there were many local films, meaning it was made in Indiana or the director or principal cast is a homegrown Hoosier. In the film “Peanut Gallery,” the filmmaker returns to her childhood home in Lafayette, Ind. and confronts her parents about her sisters’ death.
Tongues are also wagging about the documentary “One Day in April,” a film about the famed Little 500 bicycle race. “Sleeping with Other People,” “Mistress America,” and “Wildlike” are also noteworthy.
Among African-American filmmakers, Mince specifically notes Lanre Olabisi and his film “Somewhere in the Middle.”
“Somewhere in the Middle” was born out of a year-long improvisational process wherein the actors and director mutually crafted a time-fragmented, ensemble drama. Structured like a jigsaw puzzle, no character fully grasps their current dilemma as four interwoven stories are retold from varying viewpoints.
Sofia, who’s life is a mess, falls in love with Kofi, a handsome, but immature office manager, who has a crumbling marriage to demanding wife, Billie, who is herself struggling with a new-found attraction for her female co-worker, Alex.
As secrets and lies surface, each layer of the love quadrangle is slowly peeled away, leaving everyone to cope with the ripple effects of love, obsession, sexuality and self-discovery.
“They are not the type of characters we often see in film. Each one is pretty self centered in their own right. They’re making decisions based upon things they don’t know, can’t know or have no way of knowing. The audience is uncovering all of this information piece-by-piece over time. The audience knows something bad is going to happen, but they can’t do anything to stop it,” explained Olabisi, in an interview with the Recorder.
What also makes this film special is that “Somewhere in the Middle” was made after raising over $100,000 on Kickstarter – said to be a rare feat for films and even rarer for films with a predominantly Black and Latino cast. The film also attracted the attention of former NBA player Chris Webber and filmmaker Peter Gilbert (“Hoop Dreams”), who both came on board as executive producers to help finish the project.
“It brought what we needed for the project. It was a nice, added boost,” said Olabisi.
What Olabisi calls a “romantic dramady” will be shown July 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the IMAX Theatre located in the Indiana State Museum, and July 21 at 1 p.m. at the Toby Theatre in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
And thanks to the generosity of Indy Film Festival’s Kickstarters, they are bringing in more filmmakers from around the globe to meet, mingle, and provide insight into their creative process with viewers.
Charles Miller, who plays the role of Kofi, will be in Indianapolis on behalf of Olabisi July 17 for the initial screening of the film and to participate in a film panel on July 18.
For more information, visit Indyfilmfest.org.
