Mumblecore Makes A Noise

Anton Bitel introduces a low-key movement in US independent cinema

It started with a murmur. In 2002, Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha appeared on the margins of the festival circuit. Ultra-low-budget, semi-improvised, and with appalling sound quality ('cleaned up' years later for theatrical and home release), it was a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into the inert lives and halting relationships of its characters (played by a non-professional cast).

At first, Funny Ha Ha failed to catch the attention of distributors, but certainly inspired several other budding (and cash-strapped) filmmakers - and within a few years a movement was born, described by Dennis Lim in the 'New York Times' as "the sole significant American indie film wave of the last 20 years to have emerged outside the ecosystem of the Sundance Film Festival".

The birthplace was the South By Southwest Film Festival (SXSW), in 2005. Joe Swanberg premiered his lo-fi debut Kissing On The Mouth (2005), describing its explicitness as a reaction to the sexual prudence of Funny Ha Ha. Also screening was Jay and Mark Duplass's first film, the slacker road movie The Puffy Chair (2005), which expressly acknowledged both Bujalski and Swanberg in its closing credits. Bujalski's latest film was there too, and seemed to capture these filmmakers' newfound spirit of creative solidarity and support in its very title, Mutual Appreciation (2005).

Unaided by conventional budgets or distribution deals, these twentysomething directors are all making handheld DIY films about twentysomething characters, and show a marked preference for meandering dialogue and stalled relationship dynamics over dramatic events or traditional three-act story arcs. One night during a drinking session at the festival, Bujalski's sound editor Eric Mastsunaga coined the term 'mumblecore'. Bujalski repeated it in an indieWIRE interview, and so the new movement was christened - even if all the core members would subsequently repudiate the label.

Next page • " Mumblecore is as timeless and universal as it is culturally specific"