As a reader of this fine website, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’ve likely watched plenty of indie films. And as someone who is an indie cinephile of the highest regard, you’ve likely noticed one or two tropes commonly found in this genre of filmmaking. The new film, titled “The Plagiarists,” aims to put those indie touchstones under a microscope in its own comedic style.
As seen in the new trailer for “The Plagiarists,” style is the first thing you’ll notice about the film. Shot in a decidedly lo-fi, oh-so-indie way, thanks to its TV news camera, the film takes all those commonly found tropes of this sub-genre of film and satirizes it, while also showing its reverence for the technique. Of course, you can’t think of “The Plagiarists” as the indie “Airplane!” because that’s not accurate at all. Much like the films that influence the look and feel of this dramatic comedy, “The Plagiarists” uses the genre that it aims to analyze and deconstruct to tell its own, hopefully, gripping story.
The film stars Lucy Kaminsky, Eamon Monaghan, and Michael “Clip” Payne of Parliament-Funkadelic fame. “The Plagiarists” is written by James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, and directed by Peter Parlow.
“The Plagiarists” will debut at Film at Lincoln Center on June 28.
Here’s the synopsis:
Co-written by experimental filmmakers James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, The Plagiarists is at once a hilarious send-up of low-budget American indie filmmaking and a probing inquiry into race, relationships, and the social uncanny. A young novelist (Lucy Kaminsky) and her cinematographer boyfriend (Eamon Monaghan) are waylaid by a snowstorm on their way to visit a friend in upstate New York and are taken in by the kindly yet enigmatic Clip (Michael “Clip” Payne of Parliament-Funkadelic), who puts them up for the night. But an accidental discovery months later recasts in an unnerving light what had seemed like an agreeable evening, stoking resentments both latent and not-so-latent. Exhilaratingly intelligent and distinctively shot on a vintage TV-news camera, The Plagiarists is a work whose provocations are inseparable from its pleasures.