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Maintaining a blog keeps getting more and more difficult. With teaching and more academic writing \u2013 books, articles, chapters, conference papers, and lectures \u2013 it\u2019s been an even harder struggle this past year. I\u2019m one of the four editors of a new book series on screenwriting for Palgrave. Two books \u2013 Ian Macdonald’s Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea <\/i>and Eva Novrup Redvall’s Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing<\/i> \u2013 were published recently. Both are highly recommended. Kathryn Millard\u2019s Screenwriting in a Digital Era<\/i>, on which I served as editor, will be out in early March, hopefully in time for the SCMS conference in Seattle.<\/p>\n
My colleague, Kelley Conway, and I organized the annual Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) conference in Madison in late August, the first time it has been held in this country. David Bordwell wrote a detailed blog<\/a> about it. I was too busy worrying that everything would go smoothly. It did. Scholars and practitioners attended from all over the world, including large contingents from Australia and New Zealand, the UK, as well as Finland. Jon Raymond, Larry Gross, and Kristin Thompson gave great keynotes, along with Jill Nelmes who conducted a keynote workshop on research possibilities within the field. Putting on the conference was well worth the effort \u2013 it was a terrific event. I look forward to attending the next one in Potsdam, Germany, October 16-18, 2014.<\/a> It is being organized by Kerstin Stutterheim. The deadline for submissions has been extended until January 25.\u00a0 In any event,\u00a0 I hope to see you there.<\/p>\n I also showed my own films and lectured on the films of Andy Warhol in Seattle, Portland, and Eugene this past fall. A special shout-out goes to Vanessa Renwick, a great filmmaker, for all her help. Her short film, Britton, South Dakota <\/i>(2003) is one of my favorite avant-garde films of all time. I\u2019ve seen it at least 10 times. You owe it to yourself to buy her compilation video, which you can order through her website, The Oregon Department of Kick Ass<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m scheduled to be in Boulder for a Guy Maddin Symposium in early March. Maddin will also be in Madison for screenings in February, so I can\u2019t tell you how much I\u2019m looking forward to both events.<\/p>\n My best film list always comes out in February, but last year it came out much later than I wanted, so I\u2019m trying to make up for it by posting it very early (at least for me) this year. I feel much more optimistic about the state of indie cinema this year. As a matter of fact I thought it was truly great year in terms of quality, even with the entire industry in transition.<\/p>\n A number of films that appear on my list were shown as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival in April, though it\u2019s taken me months to write about them, mainly because I needed to have a chance to view them a second time. Joe Swanberg, Frank V. Ross, Dan Sallitt, and Andrew Bujalski all attended the festival with their films. The first three filmmakers generously had special sessions with our advanced production students.<\/p>\n I try very hard to see the films in theaters. There is something I still love about the big screen and seeing a film with an audience. To me, streaming has its limitations. Amazon Instant and iTunes have been screening some indie films at the same time they are released theatrically. That\u2019s how I saw Drinking Buddies<\/i>. Factory 25 has only released some of its great indie library of films that way. Call me a contrarian, but I still like owning the DVD or Blu-ray. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I have seen many of the films that make other people\u2019s lists. I managed to view such titles as: Inside Llewyn Davis<\/i>, 12 Years a Slave<\/i>, Before Midnight<\/i>, Upstream Color<\/i>, Short Term 12<\/i>, Fruitvale Station<\/i>, Prince Avalanche<\/i>, Stories We Tell<\/em>, This is Martin Bonner<\/em>, Mud<\/em>, and Museum Hours<\/i>, among others. My favorite documentary was Leviathan<\/i>. I was grateful for a chance to see it in a theater at the Wisconsin Film Festival. By the way, I highly recommend Scott MacDonald\u2019s new book, American Ethnographic and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn <\/i>from University of California Press. Here is my list of the best indie films of 2013: (Click on the titles below for extended commentary). <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0 Spring Breakers<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 (Harmony Korine) Spring Breakers<\/i> knocked my socks off. I love that the coeds drive all of 38 miles from Sarasota up (not down) to St. Pete. They claim to be in search of themselves and something different, yet they are already in a warm climate. Spring break turns out to be only more of the same, only on a grander scale. And James Franco, please give that man a statue. When he fixates on Selena Gomez, am I the only one who thought she cried real tears because she was having flashbacks?<\/p>\n As far as influence, this seems to be the year of Joe Swanberg. He has connections, in one way or another, to eight of the ten films on the above list. No one has ever had two films on this list in a single year. That\u2019s pretty impressive. For the record, Joe\u2019s favorite film<\/a> of the year was Frank V. Ross\u2019s Tiger Tail in Blue<\/i>.<\/p>\n Tim Sutton\u2019s Pavilion<\/i><\/a> and Jill Soloway\u2019s Afternoon Delight<\/i>, which won the Director’s Award at Sundance last January,<\/i> are two films that easily could be on my list. Jill is a former student, so I don\u2019t claim to be objective, but Quentin Tarantino had her film on his list, and I totally understand why. Jill takes more risks in her debut feature that most other directors would take in a career.<\/p>\n For purposes of comparison, you might want to check out my lists of \u201cThe Best Indie Films of 2012<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Best Indie Films of 2011<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Best Indie Films of 2010<\/em><\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Best Indie Films of 2009<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cThe Best Indie Films of 2008.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Note: A special thanks to Michael Trevis, along with Peter Sengstock, for helping me to maintain this blog. I also owe a great debt to the programming of Jim Healy and Mike King at the UW Cinematheque and Wisconsin Film Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maintaining a blog keeps getting more and more difficult. With teaching and more academic writing \u2013 books, articles, chapters, conference papers, and lectures \u2013 it\u2019s been an even harder struggle this past year. I\u2019m one of the four editors ofRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,39,25,8,35,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":63,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4042,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/4042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n2. \u00a0 Frances Ha<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 (Noah Baumbach)
\n3. \u00a0 Computer Chess<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 (Andrew Bujalski)
\n4 .\u00a0 The Unspeakable Act<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em> (Dan Sallitt)
\n5. \u00a0 Drinking Buddies<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 (Joe Swanberg)
\n6. \u00a0 Sun Don’t Shine<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 (Amy Seimetz)
\n7. \u00a0 Tiger Tale in Blue<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 (Frank V. Ross)
\n8.\u00a0\u00a0 Ain’t Them Bodies Saints<\/a>\u00a0 <\/em>(David Lowery)
\n9. \u00a0\u00a0I Used to Be Darker<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 (Matt Porterfield)
\n10. All the Light in the Sky<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 (Joe Swanberg)<\/p>\n