Early DV DIY Pioneer

Thought we would help Sujewa Ekanayake out a little in his research on the history of DIY films with this "later" installment of the movement (post Cassavetes and pre-"mumblecore"). Marc Forster was one of the earliest pioneers of the DV DIY movement.





In 1990, when he was 20 years old, Marc Forster moved to New York, in the United States. For the next three years, he attended New York University's film school, making several documentary films. In 1995, he moved to Hollywood and shot an experimental low budget film ($10,000) called Loungers (still unreleased), which won the Slamdance Audience Award. Forster's first motion picture was the psychological drama Everything Put Together, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

His breakthrough film was Monster's Ball (2001), in which he directed Halle Berry in her Academy Award-winning performance as the wife of a man on death row. His next film, Finding Neverland (2004), was based on the life of author J.M. Barrie. The film was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Forster received BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, and Golden Globe nominations for his direction.


Everything Put Together was actually Forster's second feature film. It was also shot on mini dv (for not much more than his $10,000 debut), and starred Radha Mitchell, who went on to work with Woody Allen as the lead in Melinda and Melinda.


An idyllic suburban life has never been portrayed to more queasy effect than in Marc Forster's Everything Put Together. Angie (Radha Mitchell, High Art) seems to have it all--a loving husband, a close circle of friends, a baby on the way. But when her newborn dies of SIDS, the isolated grief that quickly intervenes presents an alarming portrait of modern-day tribal outcasting as the American dream gets turned inside-out to reveal a cruel undertow. Treated as though she might taint their own families with bad luck, Angie's girlfriends abandon Angie to her grief and increasingly unstable behavior. Forster (Monster's Ball) shuttles artfully between the intimate handheld camera commotion of communal activities--neighborly barbecues, shopping excursions, rap sessions among friends--and the motionless scenes of Angie's unhinged state when alone, to create an atmosphere of suburban suffocation matched only by Todd Haynes's Safe. Everything Put Together was shot entirely on digital video, and its innovative direction and excellent cast subvert the familiarity of the home video to chilling effect.


--Fionn Meade
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