State of the Art

Indie Film Mondays

by Joanne Hinkel

Any other night of the week, this is where a rock-and-roll band would be playing. Instead, in the pitch black of the Midway Café, art students and beer-guzzlin' regulars search for their cigarettes, eat popcorn out of plastic baskets, and stare at a movie screen hanging over the stage. "This is an independent from a filmmaker living in the South End," Evonne Wetzner shouts from behind the bar, as she rushes to pour an ale for a thirsty customer.

Rather than sounds, barflies are absorbing images of impoverished Nicaraguan farming villages and Washington-based protests against Structural Adjustment in a short documentary entitled "Deadly Embrace." That's tonight's dose of independent filmmaking, sandwiched between two cult classic features, the psycho-chick flicks I Shot Andy Warhol and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

After returning from Columbia University film school in New York last spring, Wetzner realized there was no public place to show off her documentary "Illegal Stop and Search by Boston Police," or works in progress, like a silent film in which she murders Barbie. But by September, the 25-year-old filmmaker had secured approval from the owners of the Midway to show films on an off-night at the bar. "My aim was to show a wide range of films and to really give everybody a place to feel comfortable about their art. I had an idea to start a community theater in Jamaica Plain, something that I felt was lacking for such an artistic place. But for now this is a good way to find my audience."

In the past year Wetzner and Margot Ouellet, at the Phoenix Landing in Central Square, have championed indie-film nights in Boston with the hopes of invigorating an underground film community and giving a shot of needed exposure to indie films whose budgets come closer to four figures than five or six.

Except for the Monday-night schedules, Wetzner and Ouellet run very different shows. Wetzner's style is to sneak a local or low-budget short between two full-length features (since September, she hasn't shown anything twice); Ouellet shows a series of independents over the course of the night. All submissions are accepted and screened, from professional to student, local or beyond, 8mm to 16mm to video, low-budget to no-budget.

The Phoenix Landing is preparing for its first anniversary of Indie Nite, on Memorial Day (that's this coming Monday, May 25), by reshowing a few favorites out of the more than 100 films that have been screened over the course of the year, a repertoire that includes debuts by students from Boston University, Emerson, MassArt, the Boston Film/Video Foundation (BF/VF), and professionals from Somerville to New York City. They range from silent, black-and-white gothic visions to dorm-room pot-smoking parodies to video documentaries.

A recent showing at the Phoenix Landing featured "Bad Day at Work," by WGBH's Dan Davis, a 20-minute short of interviews with people about their worst days of work. One of the director's friends rehashes a night when he worked the front desk of a shady motel and refused to give a complaining customer an AAA discount. The story becomes a horrifying confessional when he explains that the next morning housekeeping found the tenant dead -- she'd overdosed on prescription pills before tying her head in a plastic bag. "Why did she care about the discount?" he pleads. "I don't think the nine dollars was her final fit of misery."

The Phoenix Landing (512 Mass Ave, in Central Square) presents "Indie Movie Nite" the last Monday of each month beginning at 8 p.m. Call 576-6260. For submission information call 491-1316. The Midway Café, 3496 Washington Street, Jamaica Plain, shows movies every Monday night at 8. Call 524-9038. For submissions call 524-7677.