Thin Line
Can a startup film festival change the way we think about truth? They’re certainly going to try.
n screen, filmmaker Lee Kazimir trudges across a hayfield in Western Europe, his sharp features downcast. He is on a solitary 3,000-mile walk across the continent—solitary, that is, except for the camera that documents his trek from Madrid to Kiev. The audience inside Denton’s 60-year-old Campus Theatre has come to see Lee’s film, “More Shoes,” as part of the Thin Line Film Festival, one of the few documentary-only film festivals in the nation. The festival, now in its third year, is gearing up for February 2010 with offerings that will range from the serious to the kid-friendly.
But Lee’s film has a catch, as do all the screenings at Thin Line: The audience doesn’t know for sure if Lee’s film is fictional or not. Documentaries are usually taken at face value as truthful, but Thin Line throws uncertainty into the mix by admitting a select few fictional films and no one knows which films are the entertaining fabrication, and which are outrageous but true.
Thin Line co-founder Joshua Butler says the distinction may not be as clear as we all like to think. All films, even nonfictional ones, are products of the human imagination, personal perspective and a definite bias. Documentary makers must decide, for instance, which scenes to show, or not to show, and in what order. Seemingly unscripted moments in documentaries or reality TV are frequently heavily pre-produced.
Where is the line between fact and fiction? Is there such a thing as nonfiction at all?
The Thin Line Film Festival is the product of this existential crisis, a celebration of entertaining films, most of them factual, some not. The idea is to leave you, the audience, guessing and thinking. Though some films will come from beginning filmmakers in Texas, there will be movies from all over the world. “We want to be big,” says Joshua. “We do not want to be small. We do not want to be amateur hour. We want to be the Texas International Film Festival.”
As the lone documentary film fest in Texas, Thin Line is admittedly a bit of a curiosity, but to hear Joshua, the 28-year-old president of the Texas Filmmakers Corporation, tell it, a world-class film festival north of the DFW metroplex isn’t just a possibility; it’s an inevitability. Denton, with its music scene thriving, is picking up recognition in New York and overseas as a creative enclave. “We’re in this great little art cocoon of Denton,” says Joshua, listing the qualities that make city the perfect venue for Thin Line: numerous, stately theater venues within walking distance of each other and a massive art community that draws upon the University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University.
Thin Line’s criteria for selecting documentaries is simple: “We’re not really about saving the world or disseminating socially relevant information,” says Joshua. “We’re about entertaining and showcasing entertaining films.” Being factual is not required, but being interesting is. “Nobody wants to watch boring documentaries,” he says. Joshua screens films for kids and families as well as the more standard documentary fare. One year, for instance, Thin Line screened a film featuring a psychologist’s take on terror. Another was about Japanese toys; yet another followed a group dedicated to wiener dog (or dachshund) racing.
Last year, Thin Line screened “Public Interest,” a movie that brutally satirizes reality TV, and “Johnny Dodgeball,” a pseudo-documentary about a high school dodge ball team called the Chicago Superdawgs. The films pushed on that thin line between fiction and reality, forcing the audience to get involved in the experience, says Joshua. “That way every single time you come into a theater, you’re thinking, ‘well, is this real or not?’”
If movies that seem like documentaries can be fictional, the confusion can run the opposite way, as well. One Thin Line offering, “Nerdcore Rising,” featured MC Frontalot rapping about Nintendos and Star Wars. The rumor went round that Frontalot was fake—except he turned out to be real and is today recognized as the godfather of nerdcore hip-hop. “The film took everyone for a ride,” says Joshua, enjoying the confusion from festival-goers.
While there are more than a dozen documentary film festivals around the country, the Denton festival is unique in concentrating on the fact/fiction concept. “We try to make it fun, interesting and excitingas close to the fictional experience as you can get and still be documentary,” says Joshua. ”I think you have to let documentaries just wash over you, like any movie. You have to submit yourself to the story and let yourself go there and in the end, let yourself realize that what you saw was a contrived piece of art.”
The festival’s roots began in 2004 when a group of UNT film students formed the Texas Filmmakers Corporation, their express purpose to make filmmaking more accessible with low-cost equipment rental and editing labs. Before the year was out, Texas Filmmakers was incorporated and registered with the IRS as a nonprofit. The group had aspirations of expanding beyond UNT, but it had no money. Taking a “leap of faith,” as Joshua calls it, the organization left UNT and started raising money in the fine tradition of struggling filmmakers everywhere: They became waiters. The group volunteered to man the concession stand at the Dr. Pepper Ball Park in Frisco for the entire 2005 baseball season, raising $20,000 that summer alone.
The first Thin Line festival debuted in 2007—and lost “quite a bit of money,” says Joshua with a grimace. But the young filmmakers screened 40 films and attracted 400 film lovers against some heavy competition: Denton’s Fiesta-on-the-Square and the Wild Beast Feast, not to mention the Texas State Fair and Austin City Limits Music Festival on the same weekend. By 2008, with word spreading, the audience doubled and the film festival turned a profit. They hope to double attendance again in 2010.
Nothing can stop Joshua, who sports a manic grin when he talks about the future of the festival. His office near downtown Denton is a short walk away from where many of the festival’s films are screened each year. Hanging next to his desk are two large posters with satellite shots of hurricanes tearing across the Atlantic Ocean — apt symbols for Joshua himself, who is somehow energetic and exhausted at the same time.
With Thin Line moving to a new weekend in February, and away from its heavyweight competition, Joshua is working on attracting bigger names and bigger films to Denton. “If you are making a documentary in the Southwest, you want to premiere your film at Thin Line in Denton,” says Joshua.
This event has potential. There’s such a huge hole in this genre in this state.” In a few years, Thin Line might become more than a place where amazing stories are told. It might just become an unbelievable story in itself.
by ian birnbaum