Matt McCormick believes he is more of a music artist than a filmmaker.
“It’s like putting together an album, going on tour and trying to find an audience,” the Portland-based filmmaker said. The 31-year-old has been making short experimental documentaries — also known as “postmodern docs” — for the past 10 years. McCormick rebels against society’s fondness for labels by inventing his own genre.
With the upcoming release of his DVD compilation “From Tugboats to Polar Bears,” the NU alumnus admits making short films is a lot more like being involved in the music industry than in the Hollywood vortex. McCormick began to tour this fall to promote the DVD and his newest film.
One of his 25 tour stops will be at the Block Museum of Art on Saturday, Nov. 6. McCormick will show eight of his award-winning documentaries, including “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal,” which was screened at Sundance, and a sneak preview of his latest work-in-progress, “Towlines.” The film uses slow-paced cinematic visuals to illustrate the specifics of tugboats and child-like descriptions to explain their history, painting them as tragic heroes of the maritime industry. He will lead a discussion and will be available to answer questions.
College campuses are a popular stop for McCormick and his traveling presentation. He also has visited Syracuse, Harvard and Cornell universities, and he will be at the Ice Factory and the Art Institute of Chicago before appearing at Northwestern.
“I represent someone who is able to make films and survive outside the expected Hollywood system,” McCormick said.
He said his films are a prime examples of what is possible with “$40 to $4,000, as opposed to $4 million.” They offer an artistic alternative to the commercial mainstream with its narrowed opportunities.
McCormick said he has a “higher level of connection with young filmmakers,” but a wide audience has been exposed to his films over the years. After each tour stop, he meets more people who have either read or heard about his films. “People appreciate smart humor that’s not overly comedic in a small artistic film,” McCormick said.
To this date he has had three films screened at the Sundance Film Festival, bringing much-deserved attention to his work. This process is crucial for small independent films without marketing budgets. “When the New York Times or Art Forum applaud your movie, it’s a tremendous source of publicity, especially for films that wouldn’t have much publicity otherwise,” McCormick said.
Nathan Matsuda, a McCormick sophomore, first came in contact with McCormick’s films in his Analyzing Media Texts class, where he watched “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal.”
“The construction of that film is beautiful in terms of timing and visual composition,” Matsuda said. “Subtlety is a quality far more difficult to maintain than excitement or flair in a film.”
The documentary medium always has been an interest of McCormick’s, and exploring its possibilities, twisting its conventions and converting it into something unique has been his passion.
“As an artist, I’m more concerned with the visual and structural aspects of the filmmaking process,” McCormick said. “I’m not obligated to follow the expectations of big feature films.”
And just like any other artist, McCormick needs inspiration. “I’m inquisitive about the common things I naturally come into contact with,” McCormick said. “I try to look underneath the surface to see if there’s something I’m missing.”
McCormick’s films lend a different light to the obvious. He manages to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary by emphasizing elements the audience rarely notices. “It’s about the appreciation of disregarded objects,” McCormick said. “Discovering that there’s a real beauty or an interesting history in the things people often take for granted.”
Things like tugboats and polar bears.
McCormick’s films not only magnetize the mundane, they also inspire subtle social commentary on our contemporary culture — the things we value and the things we ignore.
“Our society tends to go very fast, and we get caught up in trying to get through it,” McCormick said. “We are always racing to get to something, and it’s the little things that get sort of trampled over. Things are changing and disappearing so rapidly now. I just want to create a time capsule so we don’t forget.”
Artist vision is magnified by collaboration. “Towlines” features an original score by James Mercer, singer and songwriter for The Shins. A year and a half ago, McCormick directed The Shins’ music video for “Past and Pending.”
“We really clicked in how we viewed the relationship between artistic images and music and how they worked together,” McCormick said.
He has also worked with other artists and musicians like Postal Service, Calvin Johnson and Miranda July.
McCormick acknowledges there are films that are made for purely commercial reasons, but he discounts the statement that film as an art form has disappeared.
“People have been warped by this corporate culture mentality,” McCormick said. “They haven’t been exposed to the underground society of artistic filmmaking. You have to put in effort to find it, but it’s definitely there.”4
Medill freshman Oscar Melendrez is a PLAY writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
