Timothy Stueve
If you’ve made an independent film as a micro-budget filmmaker, you have traditionally had a pretty limited set of options for distribution. You can try to get in the film festival circuit and hope a distributor picks it up or you can try and get a small-time distributor to put it out there for cheap or free on platforms the likes of Tubi and Plex—the modern day equivalent of bargain bin DVDs. But there’s also a sort-of nuclear option: to simply put it out there for free. To put it up on YouTube or some other site, contracts, distribution deals, and royalties be damned. For quite a while, even small-time filmmakers on the internet would try to go the more traditional route, but through the last half-decade, the “Folk Filmmaking” movement has arisen, with the specific goal of distributing micro-budget movies online for free, and one of the most prominent figures in the movement, Joel Haver, has proven throughout this last year that this can be a viable business model.
The story of this movement is generally said to start in 2020 during the pandemic. A small group of filmmakers who have met online start to put their films up online for free. Included among them are: Joel Haver, Daniel Lotz, and Cody Clarke. The attitude resembles that of free and open source software developers, in the tradition of Richard Stallman. The industry and its prioritization of profitable products is seen as an impediment, and the solution is simply not to play the game of engaging with the industry at all. It is from this free software movement that Linux emerged, among countless other technological innovations. I doubt the Folk Filmmaking movement will transform their respective industry the same way, but that’s okay: their ambitions are artistic rather than technological.
The thrust of the “Folk Filmmaking” movement is the idea that the costs of distribution, rather than budgetary limitations on productions, was the only thing holding back truly independent cinema from flourishing. As explained by one member of the movement many of the indie success stories of the 90s, such as Clerks and El Mariachi, did indeed cost very little to make in terms of production, but then cost $230,000 and $200,000 to distribute, respectively. But if traditional costs associated with filming have been redefined with film and if distribution costs can be circumvented through direct-to-consumer distribution, then the only thing holding independent filmmakers from charting their own course is a mythological idea of the film industry as a club you’re either “in” or “out” of. Folk Filmmaking insists that free distribution will create its own type of cultural ecosystem, in which filmmakers are evaluated irrespective of the money they might have access to.
The movement had a small, but enthusiastic outburst in the early days of this decade, but had sort of quieted down. However, Joel Haver embarked on an impressive project last year, one which acts as a proof of folk filmmaking efficacy. In 2024, he attempted to make 12 films in one year—and he succeeded. Daniel Lotz, who coined the term “Folk Filmmaking” did a similar project in 2022, though he did not direct all of them and did not distribute all of them for free. Haver’s project feels not only like a colossal achievement but a boon to low budget filmmakers writ large. The films, despite their tight schedules, are some of Joel Haver’s best work so far, and the best of this bunch are some of my favorite films of last year. So, even though the movement itself is 5 years old by now, I think Haver’s 12-in-12 will convince many more of this movement’s—and the YouTube filmmaking scene’s—legitimacy.
The films themselves range in genre, style, and, of course, quality. The Hero’s Journey aka My Life aka The Caleb Johnston Story (I’m Caleb) is a comedic, found-footage-style chronicle of a self-pitying young man making his own life fall apart. Caleb Johnson sleeps in his car, hangs out outside the local McDonald’s to take advantage of their free wi-fi, and buys scratch cards with money he doesn’t have. It’s an uncomfortable yet uncynical depiction of self-victimization, as Haver clearly has the option to move back home with his mother but chooses not to. Haver’s performance as Caleb is representative of all of his filmmaking strengths. Though his range as an actor is not wide, it is deep, as he is able to create sympathy and pity simultaneously. He achieves this by mostly acting like himself, with key modifications. If one watches enough work by Joel Haver, it becomes evident that he is usually playing a variation of himself, which would come across as self-indulgent if his filmmaking were not sincere. This is one of the key lessons I’ve learned from watching material made by Folk Filmmakers, that amateur actors are usually only going to be good at playing themselves. Thereby the typical negative quality of an independent film, that amateur actors have a hard time sounding unscripted, gets circumvented through improvisation.
His second film of the year, Anyone Else But Me, looks far more like traditional notions of independent film. It has a rather elaborate scenario, a sizable cast, and striking cinematography. The film takes place in Los Angeles, and follows a man taking acting classes who has seemingly no ethical boundaries. He is assigned an exercise where he’s meant to act out a character to someone else in public, it’s meant to be a quaint way to exercise one’s acting chops. He inflicts this exercise upon women he meets through dating apps, much to the horror of everyone who hears of or sees this behavior. The film becomes a Coen brothers-esque comedy crime thriller when one of these women he dates while putting up a persona as a rich finance bro gets kidnapped and held for ransom. The two bumbling criminal who are themselves aspiring actors are trying out the ransom business to make ends meet, thinking that our reprehensible protagonist is genuinely ultra-wealthy. The film is full of people pretending to be someone they’re not, their artifices colliding in ironic situations, leading to a Kaufman-like, haunting finale. The film shows that Haver can make complex, nuanced, and substantial independent films with a bit more planning, though that’s not a knock on his other films, the off-the-cuff ones—I think it’s a strength to be able to make both types of films.
Speaking of which, The Text is representative of Haver’s messier, jazzier side. The film takes the form of a single long-take, where an awkward man (played by a cloddish Dax Flame) realizes, in the morning aftermath of his birthday party, that he has sent a strange and provocative text to an ex while he was intoxicated. His friends playfully berate him and try to workshop a text follow-up together. The film is entirely improvised, like all of Haver’s films, but due to its one-take nature, you can feel its improvisatory nature. That’s why I think it’s not a stretch to call it jazzy—it’s a group of people riffing off one another in an impromptu fashion, generating something surprisingly cohesive.
Hello My Beautiful Creatures feels like a film from a completely different cinematic universe. Rather than being a film improvised in one go, this film is a two-and-a-half-hour stop-motion, musical extravaganza. It follows a group of sentient toys as they do everything they can to please their God, a lazy and apathetic live-action man. The film banks on the effectiveness of contrasting the whimsical stop motion with dark subject matter—there’s revolt, conspiracy, and overtones of Nietzsche. Sadly, though, I’d say this is one of the weakest of the bunch, due its pacing. It takes far too long to pay off what it sets up, but even so, it is an enjoyable and creative ride.
It Just Takes Time is my favorite film Joel Haver made last year, and my favorite film he’s ever made. In fact, I’d rank it as my fifth favorite of 2024. At its core it is a film about grief, yet its depiction of grief is almost as indirect as possible. We see various friends gather to mourn the death of their friend’s brother. This is only alluded to occasionally and subtly, as we see a group of friends try to talk about anything but the one thing that is on their minds. I think the reason this film works so well is that it’s narrative elevates Haver’s greatest strengths as a filmmaker. Haver has a knack for capturing everyday conversation and meandering conversations between friends, in It Just Takes Time, these conversations are presented both as distraction (a type of denial of one’s existential condition) and as the genuine substance of life. There’s almost an element of suspense, too, as the audience knows the thematic undercurrents will eventually have to bubble up to the surface. They do, and the film’s final scenes have the levity and humanity of Kelly Reichardt’s films, such as 2006’s Old Joy.
Hiccups rivals Anyone Else But Me in terms of its appearance as a theatrically distributable indie film, in fact it so much resembles the traditional indie film that this becomes my main issue with the film. It’s an indie romantic comedy set in New York, in which a relationship is recounted through Woody Allen-esque interlinking flashbacks. Hiccups is the only film that feels like it could have been made by someone other than Joel Haver. It’s earnestness and relatively seamless execution certainly makes the whole thing watchable but it simply feels less passionate, less driven.
The preposterously but accurately titled film, The Diarrhea Brothers Save the Day, is, in fact, one of the best in the bunch. As one would hope, this is a pure farce. It is the comedic aspects of Haver’s work with essentially none of the emotional or personal substance he’s become good at depicting. Luckily, Joel Haver is very funny and his comedic sensibilities are enhanced tenfold when he works with the other two members of his comedic trio, Alex Martens and Trent Lenkarski. Despite it’s concept of following a family business of “diarrhea delivery men”, the film is in no way a gross-out comedy. The running gag in the whole thing is that all the characters treat such an absurd and disgusting concept with a totally straight face. We never see anything scatological, we only see men in overalls pushing barrels that we are told “contain hundreds of pounds of diarrhea.” It’s nice to see a film willing to go to such absurd comedic lengths while also having a sense of restraint, this sensibility is what I love in Monty Python and its descendants, of which I’d say this is one.
Haver’s next film, Love, Celeste, takes on a similar subject matter to It Just Takes Time, that of people gathering due to a death. Where It Just Takes Time used mumblecore-style conversations and understated scenes to explore human connection, Love, Celeste‘s approach is far more ambitious and glossy. Three men gather in Dubai (it is remarkable how much Haver travelled last year) where a woman they had all had a relationship with at separate times, has set up a sort of scavenger hunt for them to experience in the wake of her death. This concept immediately reminded me of the fiction of Haruki Murakami, and this comparison proved even more salient as a subplot mysteriously emerges which is otherworldly, surreal, and metaphysical. The beautiful setting, the mysterious narrative, and the bizarre turns the film takes adds up to a type of film Haver has never attempted before, which is partially due to the fact that this film was co-directed by the other lead actors, Daniel Lotz and Zaid Aftab, who are fellow folk filmmakers.
The film gets perhaps a bit too ambitious for its own good, and sequences which could have looked better with more time and effort are anything but seamless. Don’t get me wrong, though I really liked this one, it is filled with both strengths and flaws. Though this is not the best of Haver’s films last year, it’s perhaps the most significant for the folk filmmaking movement. Love, Celeste is proof, to me, that the folk filmmaking movement has only just begun. We can see three of its most prominent exemplars coming together to create something remarkable in the history of microbudget cinema, and something greater than the sum of its parts.
It felt like it was only a matter of time before Joel Haver would take the meta route to make one of his films. For his next two films, Haver offers a performance as himself, and in The 9th Movie, he makes a film about filmmaking from within the unique context of this 12 in 12 project. I presumed when the film began, and opening scene sees Haver talking to somebody about why he’s undertaking this project, that this would be about “director’s block”. After all, the title is surely a riff on 8 1/2, and making a meta film about how you don’t know what film to make next is a convenient cop-out, but the film takes a dramatic, strange, and hilarious turn.
Haver has gathered a group of friends to premiere his latest film, It Just Takes Time. The reception is not negative, but decidedly lukewarm. Haver takes on an evil persona of himself, as he traps his friends in a cabin and refuses to let them leave until they make a film of their own. This group of friends not only finds the prospect difficult, but they become a microcosm of a Hollywood-style film set. Like a pathetic filmmaking version of Lord of the Flies or a Zoomer-ified Living in Oblivion the mere pretext of making a film causes dynamics of power, ego, and unpaid internships to emerge. The film is really an embodiment of Haver’s filmmaking philosophy, his disdain for the film industry’s culture of discouraging newcomers and centralizing creative control on film shoots. The friends are only able to make a film once they decide to abandon any Hollywood-influenced notions of filmmaking. Though at that point, the film has begun to itself become increasingly absurd and it ends with Diarrhea Brothers-level farcical humor.
Joel Haver again plays himself in A Little Film About Friendship. The film is as simple as can be: Haver and his friend Trent Lenkarski go on a weekend trip together and chat. It’s a film which essentially lacks conflict, aside from its discussions on large-scale difficulties of life. Watching the film made me realize how rarely healthy, platonic depictions of friendship are seen in film. There’s no need for a “friend breakup” sequence or a love triangle which complicates their relationship, no, Haver’s film insists that friendship itself is a subject worthy of cinematic exploration. And indeed it is. One of the strongest sequences in any of last year’s films comes when Haver and Lenkarski have a heartfelt conversation about an existential crisis of sorts that Haver is experiencing. An emotional problem dealt with through meaningful conversation with a friend—such scenes are representative of some of the most meaningful moments in the real lives of real people, but feel nearly taboo to depict on the screen. It is because Haver in a mode of total sincerity, that there are no tricks or conceits here that the film truly pierced my soul. Alongside Amelie, it is the rare film that has made me cry from joy.
Joel Haver flips back into a mode of satire, irony, and even a bit of cynicism in You’re Point Girl. Just as The 9th Movie satirized Hollywood, You’re Point Girl offers a satire of social media. It’s a film shot entirely vertically with a phone, which follows a woman who has become famous on TikTok for pointing at things (such inane trends really do exist). She’s made enough off of her career as an influencer to purchase a mansion, but she feels ineffectual. So, she pursues a career as a musician. The lead performance by Devon Vonder Schmalz is commendable as a vapid, immature woman who has no recognition of the hard work that pursuing music requires. The film’s concept is solid, but it feels aimless. Despite the fact that Haver has used aimlessness to his advantage before, this film lacks the charm due to its ironic edge.
Haver’s last film, Coming Home is the perfect antithesis to The Hero’s Journey, and is the only documentary of the 12 films he made. The film is exactly what the title suggests, as it depicts him coming home to visit his mother in the town where he was born. The film focuses mostly on his relationship with his mother and his mother’s memories of their hometown. It’s a very genuine, sweet, portrait of an aspect of Joel Haver’s real life. Not all filmmakers are willing to show so much of themselves on screen, to forgo any attempt at artistic mystique. The film is decidedly un-cool, it is representative of a narrative movement from fiction with a sincere tone to actual non-fiction. Furthermore, it is a proof-of-concept for folk filmmaking. This is the sort of movie quite literally anyone can make, that requires nothing but a camera and a willingness to depict your personal life.
These 12 films, when taken together, represent a remarkable achievement in low-budget filmmaking. Not only do I think these films have helped Haver improve immensely as a filmmaker, I think this project demonstrates the freedom one can maintain by remaining independent of Hollywood, both in terms of creativity and efficiency. The term “folk filmmaking” itself evokes music, an artform we think of as more immediate, and requiring no establishment to answer to. Joel Haver has made this same comparison within his films, as he discusses in Coming Home. He says he’s trying to make films that are closer to music, that ones does not need all the pretense or preparation we associate with filmmaking to create something compelling. Musicians get together and “jam”, why shouldn’t filmmakers?
I think another important thing that Joel Haver’s project can teach us about independent cinema is that working outside of the studio system can actually mean greater efficiency. In many ways, the American film industry moves far slower than it used to, gearing itself towards large-scale IP-based projects that they are hoping will have a massive payout, rather than making hundreds of medium-budget films per year. The Japanese film industry, for instance, works this way. Many of the most well-known contemporary Japanese directors have also released multiple films in one year, such as Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Sion Sono, and Takashi Miike. For instance, in 1999, Miike released 7 feature films, including one of his best known, Audition. Though people may think of Audition as a masterpiece, it was not made with the years of overthinking of, say, a Stanley Kubrick film. In fact, I’d argue the sheer speed of an industry like this trains you to be a far better and more versatile director than the way Hollywood now operates in the 2020s.
In the words of the great sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, this is the “wisdom of the lizard” as described in his classic book Zen in the Art of Writing: “what can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or trigger-trapping.” This is completely true of Haver’s filmmaking as well. He films fast, and in this quickness is honesty, personal experience, and beauty.
Finally, it’s important to note that Haver’s approach is working, that it’s a viable business model. Each of the uploads of these films on YouTube has garnered tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of views. This translates to a decent amount of income based on ad-revenue. Of course, this could only be a sufficient model if one is prolific. All of this spells out a new path for microbudget cinema: to make film quickly, to distribute them freely, and to realize the liberatory potential of not needing to make a budget back
