Waiting Game

Fifteen years ago, Matthew Stevens saw a dwarf walk into a Paris café carrying a picture of a cat. None of the locals paid any attention to him.

But Stevens did. He recorded the scene in his memory. Now president of the Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City, Stevens has entered a short film about that encounter in the IFC’s Bentley Super 8 Festival. In the film, Stevens embellishes the tale, throwing in a sympathetic architect, a beautiful woman and … well, you’ll just have to wait and see the film.

In fact, so will Stevens. “Nobody watches them before they’re processed,” he says of the movies in the festival. In the Bentley competition, there is no editing. Filmmakers shoot a 50-foot roll — about three and a half minutes of footage — and then wait to see the finished movie for the first time in front of an audience.

Which is pretty daunting, like cooking a new recipe for a bunch of hungry in-laws. “It’s horrifying,” says Stevens.

Nevertheless, the beauty of shooting on Super-8 stock is that it’s still film; the flickering play of light and motion and celluloid somehow elevates even the cheapest project to near-art. A few dozen auteurs usually enter the Bentleys. Named for an old camera that sounded like a coffee grinder, the event has been part of Kansas City’s film scene since 1995. This year Stevens expects a crowd of around 250 to attend the screening.

The Independent Filmmakers Coalition, founded in 1993, has grown to include 120 members. The organization holds seminars every few weeks on different aspects of filmmaking, and it also hosts several film competitions every year — but none as risky for the filmmakers themselves as the Bentley contest.

Stevens believes in short films. “You should be able to tell the story without a word of dialogue,” he notes. But having made more than half a dozen shorts, he’s not a perfectionist about it. “I’m to the point now where I’m pleased with my body of work. I can handle a clunker or two.”