Earlier this week, I got online and streamed a movie promising "A new take on the world's oldest profession." Whoa, it's not what you're thinking. It's called Night Deposit, and it's an award-winning indie short by Boston filmmaker Monika Mitchell.
Anarchy in the UT
The award in question is the Audience Award for Best Anarchy On-Line Film at the Slamdance film festival. They call it Sparky.
Huh?
Okay. The Sparky is the award statuette -- a little dog that's much cuter than the Oscar -- on Monika Mitchell's mantle. Slamdance is the edgier alternative to the Sundance festival, held in the same place (Park City, UT) at the same time (late January). Anarchy is the new online division of Slamdance, for short films. It has some juried awards, but some winners are chosen by popular vote. In that way, it's more like democracy than anarchy. The festival organizers seem to think the audience vote is the most important one, too: Night Deposit's award is the only one mentioned on Anarchy's front page.
The Anarchy site got over a million hits the week of the competition -- contrast that with Slamdance's 100-person screening rooms in Utah, and it's easy to see why a filmmaker would be willing to shrink her film to fit the two-inch Real Player screen. Mitchell shot her 8-minute movie thinking it would be seen on film, but was thrilled by the attention it got online. One million hits, remember. Even if not every visitor watched her movie, that's still some pretty good exposure for a first-time auteur. "It's like a dream come true for a filmmaker," she said.
And then she won. "I was just so stunned, thinking that so many people had seen and enjoyed my film," said Mitchell of her Audience Award, "Literally, my breath was taken away. I couldn't speak." She's not exaggerating: a look at the pictures from awards night confirms that she "was too choked up to say anything to anarchic about being the first ever Anarchy winner."
They like her! They really like her!
Screen Globally, Film Locally
If you're one of those Bostonians who sat in the theater picking local landmarks out of Good Will Hunting, now you can do it online. Night Deposit might look a little familiar, especially to Mitchell's South End neighbors. Look for the Franklin Café, JJ Foley's, Restaurant Zinc (now Bomboa), and Tremont Drug. The apartment you'll see is production designer Parrish Kennington's place in Southie.
And it's not really about prostitution. Though money does change hands. Oh, just go watch it. (As long as you're not offended by condom jokes). If you'd rather not battle your modem connection, Night Deposit will screen at the Coolidge on March 27, and Mitchell is planning to turn it into a full-length feature film.
Broadband-enabled film fans are set. You might have missed the first Anarchy competition, but they're planning on making it a monthly event starting in March. Stay tuned. And no fair stuffing the ballot box for local filmmakers.
Jen Muehlbauer's column appears every Friday in digitalMASS. Her e-mail address is jen@englishmajor.com.