JULY'S SUMMER

[June 29th, 2005] Watching Me You and Everyone We Know in a makeshift movie theater during the Sundance Film Festival, there was no doubt we were all watching something special. The film had already had several screenings, and the buzz was building among critics and festivalgoers. But as the audience was drawn into the debut feature film from Miranda July, you couldn't help but know that everything was about to change for the former Portlander (she now lives in Los Angeles), who was mostly known around town for her performance-art pieces.

July's film would go on to win a Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance, followed by awards at this year's Cannes International Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival and San Francisco International Film Festival. Along the way, Me and You and Everyone We Know racked up an impressive amount of positive praise from film critics and audiences.

In an industry where hype and buzz can transform even the most mediocre film into a huge hit, attention can be generated simply by an effective marketing blitz. With enough smoke, mirrors and meaningless pull quotes from worthless critics, crap can be spun into pure gold. But with Me and You, the buzz isn't the result of industry alchemists looking to pull a fast one, it's the result of an incredible film, made by July and producer Gina Kwon, that speaks for itself.

July isn't the first independent-film poster child to emerge from Sundance. Almost every year some hot new filmmaker emerges from the cold mountains of the tiny Utah ski town, and the media delivers the new "it" kid, who represents the maverick filmmaking aesthetic that eschews the cutthroat mercenary dogma of mainstream Hollywood. Some of these wunderkinds, like Steven Soderberg, Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, have gone on to become power players in the industry they once gazed at from the outside. But for every Tarantino there are dozens of filmmakers like Wendell Harris (Chameleon Street, 1990's Sundance Grand Jury winner) or Steve Chbosky (The Four Corners of Nowhere, a 1995 Sundance nominee), who make great films, never to be heard from again.

Whether July has it in her to become a great filmmaker or will simply be someone who made a great film remains to be seen. Hopefully, she'll continue to build upon the vision she displays in Me and You and Everyone We Know. But at least for now, she stands as an artist who has crafted one of the year's better films.