V/H/S
"It's really got a little bit of everything — and not just because it's an anthology," Roxanne Benjamin says of V/H/S, the horror anthology she helped produce. Making its Nashville premiere 10 p.m. April 21 at NaFF, it assembles an all-star lineup of young-blood directing talent, including Ti West (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers), Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Young American Bodies), Adam Wingard (of the upcoming You're Next), David Bruckner (The Signal), Glenn McQuaid (I Sell the Dead), and interactive designers-turned-directors Radio Silence.
"We put together a really solid group of horror and indie filmmakers, and they all brought something new to the 'found footage' genre and combined it with pretty much every other subgenre of horror while doing so," Benjamin says. "We were all so sick of seeing the same mechanisms of storytelling exploited in every found footage film. We wanted to challenge the filmmakers we knew — particularly if they weren't fans of found footage — to find something that would make it interesting to them, and hopefully therefore to the viewer."Â
You may remember Benjamin from her time here in Nashville at The Belcourt, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, or the Documentary Channel, but the current Los Angeles resident maintains her roots in Music City. "I still have a 615 area code on my phone," she says. "And I see [Belcourt programmer] Toby [Leonard] and [actor] Travis [Nicholson] and other Nashvillians out on the film festival circuit all the time, so I feel just as connected to Nashville now as I did when I lived here."
The difference being that following V/H/S's triumphant debut at Sundance — a process which involved audience members passing out, violent food poisoning, and deals signed in hospital rooms — Benjamin is part of the new wave in American genre cinema. As co-head of acquisitions for The Collective's genre venture, Bloody Disgusting Selects, she's helped to bring transgressive next-wave genre films like Lucky McKee's The Woman and Sion Sono's Cold Fish to domestic audiences. V/H/S is now slated for release through Magnolia Pictures' genre subsidiary Magnet. Asked her advice for others who want to follow their example, she shrugs.
"You just start making things," she says, "and make them with the people you like, whose tastes you share and trust. Those people will introduce you to more people whose opinions they trust, and you'll make bigger and better things because of it. Then, when the industry starts to take notice, you'll have a solid foundation of people around you who can tell you when you're being an asshole — or that the idea you have could be better."
