Not that we would expect IndieWire to make a deal about it, but today (October 5, 2007) on their front page here, four top IndiePix are featured.

First up is Billy The Kid from Director Jennifer Venditti, Produced by Jen and Chiemi Karasawa. Their film was a great success at the IFC screening earlier this week, playing to a sold out, waiting line crowd. Here they are with friend, John Tuturro. We’ll hear more about this film as we get further into the Fall. IndiePix exex’s are Executive Producers on this great title. Here is the link to that story.

Next in line is My Kid Could Paint That from Director Amir Bar-Lev. Amir has a great project, supported by A&E and picked up at Sundance by Sony Pictures Classics. Amir was previously a contributor to The Katrina Experience with a compelling documentary, New Orleans Furlough. This 20-minute short film finds the intersection of drugs, war, and failed love in one National Guardsman returning from Iraq to help after Katrina. It is one of the most powerful films in the Full Frame/IndiePix collection The Katrina Experience, available for the Library and Educational markets through IndiePix. IndiePix contributed finishing funds for that project. The front page today will scroll by into history, but here is the link to the article on his new film.

Still on the IndieWire front page, just a few paragraphs down, is an interview with Alex LeMay, director of Desert Bayou. Desert Bayou is the lead title in the Full Frame/IndiePix collection The Katrina Experience, and we commented on its very successful screening at MOMA last week in another post. Alex gave IndiePix a “special thanks” in the credits for our help in funding some of the editing on this project. Desert Bayou is being distributed by Cinema Libre Studios, IndiePix’s partner for retail DVD distribution. Check out this whole interview here.

We’re very proud of our filmmakers, and very happy to be associated with them. And we’re very pleased when so many of them are up front and center (where they ought to be!).

I’m sure by now many of you have checked out the new short film by Wes Anderson. If not, it’s available as a free download from iTunes. Hotel Chevalier stars two of my absolute faves, Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman. Not only are they fantastic in this subtle, unnerving short, but the concept of releasing a prequel, though only a smidge of a tale, before the feature hits the screens has me bristling with excitement at the potential reinvention of the film-going experience. Here’s the director’s take on the project:

“I have always liked short stories. This one is a companion piece to The Darjeeling Limited, but was originally meant to be seen on its own. It takes place two weeks before the feature film, and is set in a hotel room in France. There are many connections between the short and feature, and I hope that the people who see one of them will want to see the other…”

It’s the honoring of short stories that really rung true for me in this piece. Hotel Chevalier doesn’t spoon-feed the audience. It’s stunted, questioning, and ambiguous; I’d be hard-pressed to agree that it completely stands alone as Anderson offers. But rarely do feature film directors return to a shorter milieu, and the fact that he took the time to put this together, (even if it is, in a certain light, an element of a marketing campaign) gladdens me. Back in the day, well, back in someone’s day, serial stories were an integral part of the industry. A night at the theatre would generally include a couple short, episodic adventures which featured Tarzan or The Lone Ranger, or some other hearty trailblazer over weeks and months, in addition to the feature or features the audience paid to see, making it a full-bodied experience. The fact that Anderson’s playing in the same universe…well, let’s just say that when I hit the AMC, I’d love to see a short film or two next to the commercials for Ford and Coke and the Gap that assault my senses. And now that I think about it, Schwartzman’s character does have a bit of The Lone Ranger in him…

There’s so many talented filmmakers working independently, with few resources, producing works that are short in running time but long in worth, expression, emotion, and character. It’s nice to see that Wes Anderson hasn’t forgotten his roots, and is acknowledging the audience that would seek out creative depictions of stories and characters that are too large to fit into ninety minutes, even if only by a smidge.