Hoovie: When you've seen a new movie and you want to talk to someone about it
By Jim Slotek
One of the lessons of more than a year of lockdown and social distancing is that some things just aren’t as much fun by yourself.
Follow that thought where you want. We’re here to talk about movies, specifically an online “Preview club” called Hoovie.
The brainchild of a B.C. filmmaker named Fiona Rayher, Hoovie is a project based on the “book club” model. Film fans get a week to stream a movie yet to be released to the public (courtesy of the eclectic distributor filmswelike, founded by director Ron Mann).
Undine: Paula Dear is a nymph whose return to the water just may be over someone’s dead body.
At the end of that week, they can join a “Happy Hour” discussion of the same film on Zoom with fellow cinephiles, and even drink the same wine, courtesy of B.C.’s Summerhill Winery which can deliver across the country within a week.
The lengths people will go to recreate social experiences have been impressive, if not always a reasonable alternative to the real thing. Film fans attend drive ins and honk their appreciation. I’ve been to virtual “parties” at film festivals where I’m there as an avatar, walking up to other avatars and seeing the person on video as I get close. It’s a disjointed and ultimately unfulfilling experience. But the will is there.
As for Hoovie, it provides an answer to the question, “What good is watching a movie if you have no one to talk about it with?”
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
The featured movie this week is the German film Undine, which is kind of like a darkly Teutonic version of The Little Mermaid with murder. Paula Beer (who won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival for her performance) plays the title character, a historian at a Berlin architectural museum, whose boyfriend has just cheated on her and dumped her. Bad news for him, since Undine is a water nymph who (like Ariel) attained human form for love of a human.
But what happens when that love goes sour?
On Thursday, May 27, at 5 p.m. PT, 8 p.m. ET, a small crowd of fans will get together online to share their thoughts about the movie, along with an architect to provide side insights into that side of the film. If the crowd gets unwieldy, they’ll split up into “break-out rooms” to keep the discussion numbers intimate.
“It’s really casual,” Rayher says. “It’s meant to mimic people huddled together in a living room.”
Fiona Rayher
(For the general public, Undine will be available on VOD on June 4 in Toronto and June 11 in Vancouver).
The series started in April, with the French film Perfumes, and continues in subsequent months with Tove (Finland), Listen (Portugal, U.K.), the supernatural Mexican film 499 and Wife of a Spy (Japan). Subscription to the service is $15 monthly. Each previous month’s featured film gets another run the month after so that members can catch up.
Pre-pandemic, Hoovie was around in another form, a for-hire pop-up film screening service that could turn bars, restaurants, living rooms, rooftops or even boats into theatres for the client and friends.
“In 2016, I released a film called Fractured Land, a coming-of-age story about an indigenous lawyer,” Rayher says. “I went up north to the top of BC and organized this grassroots screening tour. People wanted to see our film, but couldn’t really because there are no theatres up there.
“So, we brought up a projector and speakers and people rented spaces. And then they started doing the same thing down south in Vancouver. And it became such a learning experience watching our film being screened in a way where people could actually connect.
“I kind of realized that our film was just a vehicle for people to find each other. There are very few ways for people to meaningfully experience cinema with others, and that led me to Hoolie.”
Come the pandemic, Hoovie needed reinventing.
“People are completely inundated with films right now,” Rayher says. “And our mission is to connect the community with film. My husband put it well. He said, ‘You know what really builds a community is familiarity and consistency. It’s people seeing the same people over and over again.’”