When Indie Festival Backer Dreams, It’s in Vivid Color

NEW YORK —  Stacy Spikes can see it all in front of him, even if hardly anyone else can. But his vision is so fat, vivid and bright that at times it becomes just as distinct to anyone who hears him talk about it.

Mostly, however, one wonders if he’s kidding or merely deluded. A whole audience for independent black cinema? A discriminating and diverse market large enough to sustain even the quirkiest product of a minority filmmaker’s imagination? In street parlance, the brother must be trippin’.

But then again, who would have imagined that the Urbanworld International Film Festival, conceived and produced by Spikes, would have just completed its second year, having bolstered its standing as the largest competitive black film festival in the United States?

Or that the festival, which showed more than 70 features, documentaries and shorts earlier this month in Manhattan, would be a premiere showcase for such forthcoming major studio releases as “Down in the Delta,” poet-author-icon Maya Angelou’s filmmaking debut for Miramax? Or Warner Bros.’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” which stars Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Lela Rochon as the three warring widows of star-crossed teen idol Frankie Lymon?

So when listening to Spikes, who’s been a marketing vice president for indie movie institutions Miramax and October Films, one should take him seriously when he says he can see how an audience for black films can be cultivated and nurtured.

“It’s very doable,” Spikes says while catching a breath between festival duties. “And there are three places to look. First, there’s the gospel market. If you want to make money, just take one of those gospel plays that get performed in community theaters. They’re low-budget. They have simple stories. You don’t need a whole lot of explosive effects, and they have a loyal following. . . .

“Second, there’s the young, hip, dreadlocked crowd, the ones who made [1997’s] ‘love jones’ so popular. You can show those kinds of movies in the basement of clubs if you don’t get them to stay in theaters. . . .

“And then, you have the middle class. The ones who are really looking for different stories. They don’t want the same tales from the past like, ‘look-what-your-grandfather-did-to-my-grandfather’ stuff. But maybe even grown-up versions of the kind of sex comedies you see with ‘Booty Call’ but deeper and richer in character. . . .

“I know it’s hard to believe that these possibilities haven’t been mentioned before, but they’re sitting there waiting to happen,” Spikes says. “I can see them!”

It isn’t just Spikes’ optimism that’s infectious. It’s the mix of enthusiasm and yearning one sees in the faces of black and Latino screenwriters, producers, actors and movie buffs making their way from screening to screening during the four-day Urbanworld festival.

No doubt the collective glow comes from a shared acknowledgment that independent minority filmmakers really do constitute a community and have some place to carry their dreams and show them off. Such opportunities were almost nonexistent at other film festivals, which was why Spikes created Urbanworld in the first place. As one of the few black film executives, he often found himself buttonholed by black filmmakers looking in vain for space at some of the more well-established festivals.

“At a certain point, you get sick and tired of not getting to see the movies [made by black independents] except on video or through your friends, and finding these movies as brilliant as your friends say and then hearing outside your community, your world, that these same movies aren’t good enough or marketable enough. That’s when you ask yourself, ‘Am I crazy or am I letting . . . [the mainstream] define my sense of reality?’ That’s when the idea of a forum like this came to mind.”

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In its brief history, Spikes’ idea has reached the point where it is almost established on the annual calendar of film festivals nationwide. He would love it if the whole month of August were regarded as Black Film Month. The Sundance Channel, one of the festival’s sponsors, has practically, if unofficially, complied with his wishes, with “Representing Soul,” a monthlong festival of shorts and features by black filmmakers, including some shorts shown at last year’s Urbanworld festival.

It’s hard to tell, however, what a filmmaker who competes at a fledgling festival like Urbanworld can reasonably expect in terms of major-studio distribution. For every film like “Soul Food,” which was shown at last year’s Urbanworld festival and, months later, became a pleasant surprise at the box office, there are many more, like last year’s audience-award winner, “Fakin’ D Funk,” that haven’t made it to the Great American Multiplex.

This year’s audience award winner, Sterling Macer Jr.’s “Park Day,” is a rite-of-passage drama with an attractive cast of newcomers and compelling intra-family dynamics. The best feature prize went to “The Planet of Junior Brown,” Canadian writer-director Clement Virgo’s adaptation of Virginia Hamilton’s novel about a sweet-natured, overweight teenage piano prodigy’s struggles at home and on the streets. Your guess is as good as Spikes’--or anyone else’s--as to how they’ll fare in a commercial mainstream that’s hazardous to minority-oriented product.

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After all, even black audiences, given the choice between an artistically ambitious work like John Singleton’s “Rosewood” or a knockabout lowbrow farce like “Booty Call” (both 1997), are more likely to make the latter a hit while accelerating the former’s drift into the home-video market. (“Booty Call” earned more in its first two weeks, $13.8 million, on its way to $21 million, than the $13.1 million “Rosewood” made in its entire theatrical run.)

One laments, for instance, the treatment given in such an environment to a finely crafted feature such as “Cappuccino,” Craig Ross Jr.’s romantic thriller about a writer caught in a web of deceit involving his wife and a seductive other woman. A stylish buppie film noir set in Los Angeles and cast with unknowns, Ross’ film was shown at this year’s Urbanworld. Those who liked it asked Ross when it would reach theaters. It won’t, Ross said. It’s going directly to home video in the fall.

Spikes understands such hardships and responds to them with a hope that any advocate for independent film of any color can fervently articulate.

“You’re not going to hear 20, 30 years from now that ‘Godzilla’ was a classic. But you will hear about [independent] movies like ‘Bagdad Cafe’ [1988] or ‘Chasing Amy’ [1997]. There will always be movies made whose power is meant to be sustained well into the next era, and we’re just as capable of making those movies as anyone.”