On-demand TV, equality for all

Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell is a remarkable visualist. His latest, “Everlasting Moments,” came out this spring, and like most foreign films, was briefly in a handful of local theaters.

This film was meant for the big screen with its audience immersed in darkness, where the images, so beautifully framed, come to life in the darkness. Here’s how I saw it: at home watching on a 35-inch Sony at 8:30 on a foggy Saturday morning that soon turned sun-soaked, reflecting off the screen. Distraction also came in the form of a crow feeding off newly sown grass seed and the English setter that lunged off the couch in hot pursuit. And there were the phone calls -- from a daughter, from a telemarketer.

Am I sorry that I didn’t see “Everlasting Moments” in a theater where it was meant to live? Yes, profoundly so, and heartfelt apologies to the filmmaker. Am I sorry that I saw “Everlasting Moments” even with the sun, the crow, the dog and the rest of it? No. I am not.

I will remember its beauty, its story of an abused Swedish working-class wife in the 1920s who finds solace in the pictures she creates long after I’ve forgotten the rest. That is the blessing and the curse of what is now the territory primarily of Independent Film Channel. Through early June, “Everlasting Moments” can be seen on one of IFC on-demand TV platforms that is split between the films already in theaters and films drawn from the festival circuit that may never make it that far.

The cost? $5.99 for 24 hours, that is assuming your cable system offers IFC Festival Direct and IFC in Theaters as part of its options, which most, but not all do.

You might have caught “Everlasting Moments” in L.A. during its run, but you definitely haven’t seen “Trail of the Screaming Forehead,” from writer-director Larry Blamire, at least not in a local theater. “Screaming Forehead” began its journey at Seattle’s film festival in 2007 before hitting Scotland’s Edinburgh Film Festival in 2008.

Whether you’re drawn to the horror/parody genre or not, it’s hard not to at least be intrigued by the notion of alien foreheads overtaking a small town, sucking the souls out of the unsuspecting and turning them into zombies.

That I didn’t see it in a theater matters -- trust me on this one -- not at all. The foreheads, at least until they glom onto the town folk, look a little like Pop-Tarts on the move, but without the sugar coating. It had an Ed Wood-ian charm in miniature that might have escaped it on a bigger screen.

“Screaming Forehead” is typical of what a lot of people think of as an independent film -- singular, somewhat bizarre and low budget. But it’s one that I happened to like, not for its production value but for its very smart/funny take on horror’s early days.

Flipping through the IFC on-demand options, there are choices as varied as “Forehead,” the esoteric realms of “Lemon Tree,” which catches a Palestine woman’s earthy way of coping with the conflict that rages around her, and the upcoming French film “Summer Hours,” a loving look at a mother’s passing and the ways in which we all rewrite our family’s story.

Two new films are added to the lineup every Thursday, and most have an 8- to 12-week run. As is often the case in the independent film world, many paint intimate, personal stories that don’t demand size to succeed. There are, sadly, no documentaries, which, the breathtaking panorama of a “Winged Migration” notwithstanding, tend to retain their power writ small. (IFC execs say they plan to include documentary offerings down the road).

Independent film has too long been considered an elitist enterprise, more the province of the East and West Coast crowd. It’s meant to be an egalitarian experience, which the socio-economic mash-up of cable affords. Showing these films on cable also feeds the growing consumer preference for on-demand options. Media today are all about individual control --choosing what we want, when we want it, whether we live in L.A. or in Yuma, Ariz.

So it is a good thing that for roughly the price of a bag of buttered popcorn, almost anyone with cable and a remote can kick back on the couch any time and tap into some of the best that film festivals have to offer. It may not come close to the perfection of a theatrical experience -- with the sun rising, the phone ringing and the kids fighting in the next room -- but it is real, and raw, and like a lot of promising and even not-so-promising independent movies, very much worth the effort.

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