NEW YORK—Now in its third year, The Downtown Festival has created a much-needed scene for independent filmmakers in New York. Founded by Rebekah Sherman-Myntti, with programming led by Sherman-Myntti and Associate Director Briana Bursten, the festival held its film screenings at Roxy Cinema from October 9–18, alongside events elsewhere downtown. It offers a community where filmmakers can show their work and meet audiences outside of the corporate atmosphere of other festivals.

For a film industry that increasingly feels misguided, splintered and in search of itself, the programming has both excited as well as ultimately deepened the chaos for me: I left the festival on its closing night feeling more confused about the future of film than ever before. But the energy itself and the unevenness have their rewards: the diamonds can be shinier than usual, and the rough can be rougher than usual.

The best short I saw on the final night of the festival’s screenings was Hillary Sproul’s Linnea, a brief, nine-minute meditation on life’s choices. Sproul, who wrote, directed and stars in the film, gives a restrained performance, supported by thoughtful photography. The story begins with a conversation with a premarital friend who drops her at the edge of a forest, then gives way to a woodland reverie, during which she sees herself with him through a window. The film succinctly leaves space for uncertainty while giving us beautiful photography with clear emotional purpose.

Other screenings confronted me with such intense ontological schizophrenia that I began wondering what exactly I expect from a film festival. That I wanted to tear my hair out and yell for them to stop the projection. To ask the question: does projecting something in a theater make it a movie?

William Rowley’s Just Below Heaven was twelve minutes and one second of extended shots of two men, one evidently dying, laying in a field, without dialogue. Although Rowley explained the video’s deep personal significance in a Q&A, outside of poetry, this emotional weight does not translate to the world of Cinema, at least as I know it. Imagery and sound establish suffering, but their duration doesn’t magnify it the way a movie script can. At a certain point, it becomes demoralizing.

Another example was Cerulea, directed by AJ Lambert, the daughter of Nancy Sinatra. When we finally cut from a split screen of what appears to be heaven, in the style of The Sims™, to an octogenarian, nearly dead, suddenly beamed onto a suburban doorstep in full seriousness, I had to grab my face and wince to keep from breaking into full-throated, convulsive laughter. All of which urges my conscience to respectfully question what cinema is today, and the deep, lasting effects that recognizable celebrity scion patronage are having on a struggling cultural landscape in downtown New York City, a place already dogged by the difficulty of an affordable artist life.

The Downtown Festival makes the most promising start. Although the weaker films make one wonder whether escaping corporations simply results in being force-fed the work of celebrity heirs’ social circles as retribution, strong selections like Linnea show how their proposition of community, freedom and a willingness to show irreverent works justifies their openness. Cheers! 🥂