FULL MOON TRILOGY: Swanberg flies to Toronto to talk DIY filmmaking

There was all this talk during the early days video revolution that filmmakers would be freed from the constraints of a Hollywood system in order to make small, independent films. During Hearts of Darkness, shot midway through one of the most logistically complex films ever made, Coppola famously pines for a day when some young person will take cinema by storm using digital tools, upending traditional modes of narrative and production.

Over the last several years, Joe Swanberg has been churning out intimate, self-reflexive films at an astonishing rate. Some have championed this "DIY" style, celebrating the immediacy and intimacy of the presentations, Coppola's dream come to life. Others have dismissed them as poorly lit, poorly composed, badly acted pieces of narcissistic, masturbatory garbage.

"It's just another movie where you're complaining about making movies" - Kris Swanberg in the closing scenes of her husband's film The Zone

Having just screened the films named as part of his "Full Moon" trilogy, at first glance I was certainly leaning towards the later conclusion. There's an unrelenting amateurishness about most of the film on first blush - clunky and stilted dialogue, repeated themes of men drinking beers and women bearing their breasts, while shot after shot sees dreary looking people sitting in front of their Macbook's as they use FinalCut to slice yet another take on life in Hipsterville.

We get loads of full frontal nudity, occasionally from both genders, with a group of young men and women lacking the figures or looks to be considered "movie star" attractive by mainstream Hollywood standards. Shot with a grungy, lurid way that's fitting for the aesthetic of rabid anti-establishment storytelling, this it the stuff that the majority of film audiences would utterly abhor.

To jump into the "meta" cesspool that some would expect these films to have crawled out from, the moniker of the director seems quite fitting. On the one hand, this Swan gives us Ugly Duckling cinema, unabashedly dreary, with poor sound mixes, awkward compositions with interminable closeups that are meant to illicit reactions of anything from lust to ambivalence. Similarly, taking the other half of his name, for some this is the very thing that is an antidote to mainstream filmmaking, a superficial looking looking thing floating in an ocean of mediocrity that's powerful enough to sink even our most titanic of cinematic expectations.

Yet because of some strange, hypnotic effect the films end up being far more enjoyable as you watch several of them in a row. The repetition from film-to-film makes you recognize that moments that seem meandering or improvisatory are now explicitly intentional, echoing from film to film. Once you get past some of the more egregious elements, there's a  compelling, almost addictive neurosis that ties the whole thing together.

Summarizing effectively such languid, some would say meandering films would a fool's errand, but you can sort of tease a general narrative thread out of all of them. Silver Bullets is ostensibly about an actress cast to shoot a werewolf movie. Her boyfriend, played by Swanberg, is also a filmmaker, jealous of her connection with the horror director she's becoming close to (played by another indie darling, Ti West).

The complicated sexual dynamics that occur between actress and director, the lies actors and directors tell one another as they exploit the emotions of their collaborators, as well as the neurotic uncertainty plaguing competing filmmakers is spelled out through a series of shots set on couches and beds, in wooded areas, makeup rooms and basement rec-rooms. This film has a unique and haunting score dominated by cellos, easily the most accessible and unreservedly enjoyable part of the work.

Art History may be the best of the lot, with a concise narrative revolving around the shooting of a sex scene, both both actors and directors finding their own feelings compromised by the intimacy of the shoot. Dreamlike shots of swimming naked people, harshly lit scenes of fucking, and trying to maintain professionalism in the face of lust and envy sees Art History as the most eloquent exemplar of the themes share by these three films, but probably the least immediate. As a stand alone film I fear it would be a frustrating experience full stop, but in the context of the other two its undercurrents become more clearly understood.

Finally, The Zone plays the film-in-a-film cards with a few decks added. Here we've got a group of actors gathered together, starting out with a prayer that they're awkwardly directed off camera to participate in. We then have a series of sexual interactions, more showering, beer drinking and record playing, more miserable people making films within the film for reasons that are never explicitly expressed.

The motivation for making the films seem entirely tacit - the director apparently has some unexpressed drive, and the actors are caught within the perversity of the situation, either oggling their costars or breaking down their uncertainties on screen. The last scene of The Zone\ references Art History, with Swanberg's wife explicitly asking if the director is repeating himself. She then goes on to ask the central question raised by all these films: "Was that the point, or is that just what happened?" By the time we get the third step away from the core, Swanberg is toying with the comforting notion that there are actors being themselves, and then performing within the major work. By forcing the audience into questioning the times the film uses the tools and tonality of documentary, Swanberg's actual  directorial intent is revealed.

The numerous echoes that ring throughout each film will be for some evidence of conceptual continuity, while for others they'll be simply evidence speaking to a paucity of original ideas. Again, on closer examination, each shower scene, each awkward scene of coupling, speaks to a slightly different facet of the same perturbing discomfort. It's as if each film were in some ways drafts of the same script, stories told in slightly different ways yet speaking to a shared common notion.

Each film demonstrates that feigned or acted intimacy captured on film may have an undercurrent of truth, that one gives themselves to another person in small, compromising ways even while under the aegis of "pretend". Similarly, the documentation of true feelings, of actual events occurring both on and off set, is just as constructed and emotionally manipulative. The meta-ness of the presentations in fact reinforces the artificiality of it all.

Often, the films play as if we're watching rushes, those scenes normally left on the proverbial cutting room floor in more conventional films. We get an admixture of these glimpses of process with the occasional brazen, unabashedly cinematic moment, a collision which is occasionally, much to my surprise, quite effective.

The films are suitably concise, each running just over an hour. Cerebral and calculating, there are brief moments of violence or kindness that break through and affect the audiences in ways that conventional fiction films strive to. It's when we ignore the constant emphasis on the lying nature of the camera and performances that are being paraded in front of our eyes that the films manage an emotional connection with the work. We are occasionally startled at a given outburst, sucked into the awkward warmth of an embrace, and this is when these films work best.

The New York Times considers Swanberg's films to be "insufferable", while even some of those supporting these works consider the likes of Art History to be "inconsequential" and evocative of Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri. For such staunchly miserable films, filled with angst and feigned intimacy, it's much more easy to completely dismiss the lot as the mere playthings of actor/director's with too much time on their hands. They play on first blush as overly earnest, student-film-level character pieces with plenty of voyeuristic kinkiness to make them seem "arty".

Yet I find myself after living with these three works, back to back, being sucked into the world that Swanberg is creating. I should hate these films, by any rational measure, yet there's something inviting in the cloistered presentation, as if watching you become part of the small group crafting these works, part of some tribe teasing out new ways to tell stories by having some kind of anti-narrative. By the time I finished the third film, I found myself caring about the emotional state of these actors, obsessing about camera shadows that interrupt moments of intimacy. I'm left feeling awkward as characters seem to become too close to their fellow players, as I too am left emotionally engaged with the raw emotions displayed supposedly without filter, yet obviously filtered throughout.

Swanberg's chiseling away at something, railing against conventional notions of objectivity or simply toying with the tropes of Indie digital filmmaking, it's unclear. What is apparent is that when this topography is revealed, one begins to accept the rhythms and quirks of his storytelling still. Like abrasive jazz or the clusters of a contemporary orchestral score, order is seen from the chaos, and it becomes, if not exactly enjoyable, then at least something one can come to terms with.

These are not films one "likes", at best they can be appreciated as something different from what you're normally exposed to on a cinema screen. With an audience, they're sure to play even more strangely, the naked emotions and naked people will definitely cause some frisson with a open minded crowd.

These works are so derisive of the needs of conventional storytelling that they border on the solipsistic, yet they do avoid a number of pitfalls that would have removed any hook with which an audience could grab a hold of. Again, almost against every impulse, one finds themselves carrying about the pasty group of sulking actors and filmmakers, concerned about their well being and their neurotic, self-effacing ennui. Underneath the excessive intellectualizing and rabid smashing of the fourth wall we're left at crucial moments to care, to be startled by a particular reaction or glance at the camera.

For the brave or the foolhardy, for those open to the experiment or masochistic to embrace something outside their comfort zone, giving these films a chance may prove to be worthwhile. Try to forgive the apparent petulance of the seemingly tortured director and his manifest derision for his audience, you may just find moments of genuine, positive engagement with these works.

Take the opportunity to see them as parts of a whole, and I think you'll uncover something that in the end may very well lean towards the extraordinary. Or, you know, you might fucking hate these films as pretentious pieces of lifeless shit. Really, in many ways, I think both reactions are entirely appropriate, ideally felt at the same time. If there was a single word for holding feelings of both loathing and appreciation for a work, feelings that evolve throughout the experience of living with these films over their running times, then I'd choose to use it here.

Ultra 8 Pictures, CINSSU and Refocus co-present DIY Art & Life: A Day with Joe Swanberg at Innis Town Hall in Toronto. Tickets available here