Two hundred attendees at this film  Festival will be able to tell their grand children that  they  were there  when cinematic history was made.  They were there at one of the crucial moments when the entire course of modern film making was changed forever. Transformed as radically as it was by the invention of talkies and of Technicolor. They saw the screening of the first film in which all content and meaning had been deliberately eliminated. They witnessed the creation of the new film genre Sub-Minimalism – the ultimate in cinematic devolution.

Two students in Miss Hinckley’s kindergarten class in Flatbush, with a camera from Toys-R-Us received as a Christmas present, and with $35 saved from allowances and gifts from the Tooth Fairy, presented what is destined to become one of the classics of modern cinematography. Their production left viewers at this year’s Film Festival gasping with disbelief.

As the audience filed in, they were informed that to assure their total attention, no food or drink would be allowed in the theater, and that the doors would be locked so that no one could enter or leave during the performance. For the first five minutes, there was no sound and there was total darkness. Then on the screen appeared the title, printed in chalk on a simple classroom blackboard:  A MOVIE   by  Gary & Stevie

And again total darkness and total silence. Gradually, very very slowly the screen brightened for 45 minutes until at the climax the screen was fully lit, then a long slow fade to total darkness.

There were no credits. No “Directed by Ron Howard” or  “Directed by Mike Nicholls.” No music composed by Max Steiner, Dmitri Tiomkin or Bernard Herman played by the Royal Philharmonic. No long list of production assistants, grips, gaffers, electricians, makeup artists and all the other personnel usually involved in the making of a movie.

The audience, the elite of the movie industry, sat in stunned silence as they digested what they had just seen – a turning point in the concept of cinema. In the future, films would be made without actors, without writers, ultimately without even a camera. Then they rose as one person for a tumultuous standing ovation.

The film was the sensation of the event. The critics were ecstatic. The public was ecstatic. After that, everything else at the Festival was anti-climax.

Sub-minimalism, as such, is not new. It is commonly believed to have originated in 1952 when John Cage’s piano composition 4’33” was given its first performance. The pianist sat at the keyboard on the stage in total silence and didn’t play a note for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. At its conclusion he stood up, received the audience’s applause, and left the stage. The composition was an instant success. It has been transcribed for other solo instruments as well as for orchestra, and has been performed and recorded countless times by most of the major orchestras and soloists.

The movement received further impetus when Marcel Marceau made a recording of some of his most famous routines. The album went platinum within months of its release.

Some historians believe that the genre actually was born during the late 1930’s at Lenny’s Diner in Parsippany, New Jersey. There are confirmed reports that for his jukebox he procured a special “silent groove” record – a disc with no sound recorded on it. By depositing a nickel, the customer could purchase five minutes of silence.

The true genius of Gary and Stevie is not that they invented Sub-Minimalism, but in their adaptation of it to the cinema. They produced a film with no sound, no color, no action, and no plot – a film which deliberately is devoid of any meaning, yet filled with intellectual content.

In the future, the audience will read the review of a film. They will see the coming attractions. They will go to the Cinemaplex, pay the $8 admission fee and select the film they want. Theater 1 has “Unrequited Love.” For ninety minutes the audience in Theater 1 sits in total darkness experiencing unrequited love. Theater 2 has a western action drama. The other theaters contain whatever the producers intend their films to be.

Advance bookings of this $35 Gary and Stevie movie already guarantee that it will out gross any film that has ever been made. It’s not often that one gets the chance to see history in the making.