As the IFP's newly christened Independent Film Week gets going in Manhattan this week, most of the major American film festivals put on some sort of event for their alumni, staff and supporters gathered for the conferences and meetings here. The Slamdance Film Festival is rolling out alumnus and board member Steven Soderbergh most eclectic and humorous film, 1996's Schizopolis, for a benefit screening tonight at IFC Center. Self financed on a shoestring, this bizarre, formally audacious, self deconstructing look at a marriage coming apart, made as Soderbergh's own marriage was collapsing, was the first of Soderbergh's films he photographed (and starred in) himself. It led him away from the increasingly baroque formalism of his DOA 1995 thriller The Underneath and towards the artistic and commercial rebirth that greeted his following four films - 1998's Out of Sight and The Limey, 2000's Erin Brockovich and Traffic. It screens tonight at 8pm, followed by an appearance by the director and a benefit nearby for ticket holders. $20 seems awful steep though :)
