Andrew Bujalski

INDIE filmmaker Andrew Bujalski spent three years trying to bring his 2002 debut picture, "Funny Ha Ha," onto big screens. Low on plot and high on loopy, broken charm, it earned him a 2004 "Someone to Watch" Independent Spirit Award and critical praise when it was finally released in theaters last year.

Reporting from Park City, Utah ? Every young filmmaker has a story of pulling a tricky guerrilla maneuver to get his or her movie made. But most don't involve a renowned art museum and distracted federal employees, as it did for Brit Marling, Zal Batmanglij and Mike Cahill. "We wanted to shoot in the National Gallery, so we would wait until the guard left the room, put a piece of art on the wall [that the film called for] and just start shooting," Marling recalled of a time she and her two friends made a short while undergraduates at Georgetown University.

BERLIN -- Two films into his career, writer-director Andrew Bujalski found himself cast as the elder statesman of "mumblecore," a genre that, as far he's concerned, never existed. The term -- coined in jest by a collection of filmmakers, many of whom know and work with one another -- applies to a loose grouping of low-key, low-budget indies, talky, naturalistic and more or less concerned with the drift and disaffection of post-collegiate life.

Writer-director Andrew Bujalski follows up his well-received "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation" with "Beeswax," a subtle, amusing film filled with charm and spontaneity that displays the filmmaker's gift for creating an acute sense of life being lived before our very eyes. He and his cast of nonprofessional actors are impressively adept at revealing subtexts in everyday existence -- inner conflicts, uncertainties, shifting goals and priorities. As Bujalski has said himself of "Beeswax": "It's about families . . . people taking care of each other when they want to, when they need to, and when they ought to."

You wouldn't know it from watching Hollywood movies in which young people ace glamour jobs while inspiring articulate dreamboats to declare their love in public, but as David Rakoff once wrote, "Youth isn't wasted on the young. It is perpetrated on the young." Exactly how is brilliantly captured by Andrew Bujalski in his debut feature, "Funny Ha Ha," a deceptively simple portrait of a young woman trying to survive her dispiriting entry into adulthood.

"Misanthrope seeks misanthrope" -- so reads the Craigslist ad placed by Wilson (Scoot McNairy) on the morning of New Year's Eve. A self-described "lonely hunker-down type," Wilson is new to Los Angeles, where he has moved to become a screenwriter, and is the sort of undiscovered good guy about which many an indie movie has been made. His ad is answered by Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a mouthy, moody piece of work and just the kind of quirky-difficult undiscovered angel about whom many an indie movie has been made.

Reporting from Park City, Utah ? Every young filmmaker has a story of pulling a tricky guerrilla maneuver to get his or her movie made. But most don't involve a renowned art museum and distracted federal employees, as it did for Brit Marling, Zal Batmanglij and Mike Cahill. "We wanted to shoot in the National Gallery, so we would wait until the guard left the room, put a piece of art on the wall [that the film called for] and just start shooting," Marling recalled of a time she and her two friends made a short while undergraduates at Georgetown University.

Writer-director Andrew Bujalski follows up his well-received "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation" with "Beeswax," a subtle, amusing film filled with charm and spontaneity that displays the filmmaker's gift for creating an acute sense of life being lived before our very eyes. He and his cast of nonprofessional actors are impressively adept at revealing subtexts in everyday existence -- inner conflicts, uncertainties, shifting goals and priorities. As Bujalski has said himself of "Beeswax": "It's about families . . . people taking care of each other when they want to, when they need to, and when they ought to."

At a time when many top-shelf Hollywood directors -- names such as Michael Mann, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and Francis Ford Coppola -- are proselytizing the advantages of shooting on high-definition digital video, a small, dedicated band of independent filmmakers is championing the seemingly outdated idea of actually shooting on film. "Beeswax," which opens in L.A. on Friday at the Nuart Theatre, is the third feature by filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, all of them shot and edited on film.

GIVEN all the focus this year on the declining box office, it would follow that compiling a list of the year's best movies might feel like an exercise in futility. And if I were required to choose only from the movies that pass for major American cinema these days, it would have been exactly that. There's an odd inversion that seems to be taking place: The more big studio dramas reach for "seriousness" of the kind that tends to win awards, the more bogus they come off.

At a time when many top-shelf Hollywood directors -- names such as Michael Mann, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and Francis Ford Coppola -- are proselytizing the advantages of shooting on high-definition digital video, a small, dedicated band of independent filmmakers is championing the seemingly outdated idea of actually shooting on film. "Beeswax," which opens in L.A. on Friday at the Nuart Theatre, is the third feature by filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, all of them shot and edited on film.

BERLIN -- Two films into his career, writer-director Andrew Bujalski found himself cast as the elder statesman of "mumblecore," a genre that, as far he's concerned, never existed. The term -- coined in jest by a collection of filmmakers, many of whom know and work with one another -- applies to a loose grouping of low-key, low-budget indies, talky, naturalistic and more or less concerned with the drift and disaffection of post-collegiate life.

"Misanthrope seeks misanthrope" -- so reads the Craigslist ad placed by Wilson (Scoot McNairy) on the morning of New Year's Eve. A self-described "lonely hunker-down type," Wilson is new to Los Angeles, where he has moved to become a screenwriter, and is the sort of undiscovered good guy about which many an indie movie has been made. His ad is answered by Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a mouthy, moody piece of work and just the kind of quirky-difficult undiscovered angel about whom many an indie movie has been made.

INDIE filmmaker Andrew Bujalski spent three years trying to bring his 2002 debut picture, "Funny Ha Ha," onto big screens. Low on plot and high on loopy, broken charm, it earned him a 2004 "Someone to Watch" Independent Spirit Award and critical praise when it was finally released in theaters last year.

You wouldn't know it from watching Hollywood movies in which young people ace glamour jobs while inspiring articulate dreamboats to declare their love in public, but as David Rakoff once wrote, "Youth isn't wasted on the young. It is perpetrated on the young." Exactly how is brilliantly captured by Andrew Bujalski in his debut feature, "Funny Ha Ha," a deceptively simple portrait of a young woman trying to survive her dispiriting entry into adulthood.

When Andrew Bujalski's first feature, "Funny Ha Ha," was released last year, the then 28-year-old director was tentatively anointed the voice of his generation. But what struck me was how articulately he seemed to speak for the generation just before his too. His second feature, "Mutual Appreciation," elicits a similar nostalgic reaction, if perhaps not quite as tenderhearted. His characters may be contemporary, but his narrative style owes everything to the old-fashioned avant-garde.

Even Joe Swanberg has to stop to count the number of Joe Swanberg movies out there right now. Just this year he premiered "Uncle Kent" at Sundance and unveiled "Silver Bullets" and "Art History" at the Berlin International Film Festival. The 30-year-old filmmaker also released "Autoerotic" on video-on-demand with limited theatrical play dates. He has been shooting throughout 2011 as well and is on course to soon finish his 15th film (10 of those he made in just the last two years). The AFI Fest 2011, which starts Thursday, will spotlight Swanberg, hosting the world premiere of his newest film, "The Zone," alongside screenings of "Art History" and "Silver Bullets.