“The author was compensated for writing this article by a third party. Nonetheless, it was written specifically for 366 Weird Movies, and we believe the information and opinions contained in this piece will be of interest to our readers.
“Taste Breakers” by Brandon Engel
It was recently announced that independent film production company A24, who have contemporary filmmaker Harmony Korine in their alum roster, has partnered with Direct TV for a new collaborative business model. Direct TV will help finance the production of A24 films, which will then premiere on Direct TV’s Video on Demand service one month prior to being released in theaters. The possible implications of this move for modern independent filmmakers are vast; Korine’s transgressive contemporaries at A24 and elsewhere could stand to benefit from the industry moving in this direction.
Thankfully, the world has always been populated by thoughtful, provocative artists willing to address societal ills and provoke public discourse through their work. The big question for these subversive artists historically has always been: “how do you secure funding for projects (let alone sustain yourself) without having to relinquish creative control of your content?”
Nowadays, as companies like Direct TV use “TV on demand” as a distribution vehicle for independent film and even begin to fund films themselves, and others use the distribution model that sites like Hulu and Netflix are establishing, where films can be streamed instantaneously, independent filmmakers may now be able to reconcile their financial needs with their creative ambitions more simply than ever before. What does all of this mean for contemporary filmmakers and present-day viewers? Here’s a look at three contemporary subversive filmmakers who just might provide some insight on that very question…
Lars Von Trier
The Danish filmmaker is reportedly plagued by phobias and anxieties, which isn’t the least bit difficult to believe if you’ve seen any of his films. There’s no disputing the fact that he’s an extremely important, and unique, presence in the world of international cinema. He helped establish the guidelines of the Dogme 95 collective, which are essentially a list of restrictions that filmmakers should abide by based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, while excluding the use of extraneous special effects.
His film Dancer in the Dark (2000) featured Icelandic pop star Bjork in the lead role of Selma. Selma is a blind Czech immigrant working in a factory in the United States in 1964. She is ultimately wrongfully accused of harboring communist sympathies, and perceived as a threat to the United States. The film is perversely celebrated for having one of the most upsetting endings in the history of cinema.
There is also Antichrist (2009), which received mixed responses from critics and audiences. The film tells the story of an unnamed couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) grieving the loss of their infant son, who Continue reading TASTE BREAKERS
From the photographs and newspaper reports, the last decade of the 19th century was a tough time in rural Wisconsin. In the sick sunlight of a national and regional depression and a hard winter, a garden of small disasters sprung up, blossoming with incidents of suicide, murder, and delusion; this was where you could see the fragility of civil society and stoic reason, the hard ground of rationality cracking over the pressure of the uncanny. Wisconsin Death Trip–a 1999 
Many fans of the original series are going to hate this film. Hands down. Jonathan Frid’s beloved, beautiful, complex, tortured Barnabas Collins has been morphed into a typically Burtonesque, overly made-up, funny pages version of the character, ripe for rendering into dolls and action figures. 
Yekaterina Barabash argued that Zvyagintsev had invented “spiritual glamor”: merciless in its form and meaningless in its content. Yelena Ardabatskaya noted that it had been a difficult viewing experience since The Banishment has nothing at all in it: no people, no scents, only Emptiness. Roman Volobuyev, who at first confined himself mostly to sneering, finally succumbed and began to speak his mind. According to him, even Mikhalkov, now an object of scorn, “is a complex personality, while Zvyagintsev is a single-layered structure; he is a good professional director, at the level of an average American TV series maker, who makes films about things he does not give a damn about – and out of mercenary motives at that, and because he works not in the world of ‘My Perfect Nanny’ but in Russian, kind of, spirituality, his indifference and the fact that he knows nothing about those abstruse things that he depicts in his movies is the most terrible thing.” Even peacefully disposed Sam Klebanov complained, “It seems as if it is repeatedly suggested that we should think about the meaning of all those religious parallels. Perhaps, we did not think well enough, but somehow we have not thought up anything.”