When Independent Digital Entertainment (InDigEnt) was founded in 1999, DV filmmaking was still fairly new, although not unknown or unused. The problem was that it wasn't yet recognized and respected enough to be taken seriously in the film market. This was three years before George Lucas delivered the DV-shot Attack of the Clones and changed many minds about the capability of digital cinematography. Today, a great percentage of indie and Hollywood features are made digitally, and InDigEnt may be somewhat obsolete. It comes as no surprise, then, that co-founder Gary Winick has announced the production company will be put to rest come 2007.

Winick, who directed the upcoming Charlotte's Web, got the idea for InDigEnt from the Dogma 95 movement and started the company with John Sloss as a way for indie filmmakers to finance small, cheap projects. Many of the movies produced by InDigEnt aren't too appealing to the eye, but a few of them were great showcases for actors, such as Aaron Stanford, who broke out by appearing in Winick's Tadpole, and Patricia Clarkson, who received an Oscar nod for Pieces of April. But while the company started off well, gaining notice for decent pics like Tadpole, Pieces of April, Personal Velocity: Three Portraits and Richard Linklater's Tape, it eventually fell to near-obscurity with forgettable titles, such as Kill the Poor, Puccini for Beginners and Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim (which I still say is hilarious, if not substantial).

Digidesign, a company that fell in love with David Lynch just as suddenly as Lynch fell in love with DV, is giving away a free DVD featuring the filmmaker. Obviously created primarily as a tool to get Lynch's embrace of DV out to the public, Room to Dream: David Lynch and the Independent Filmmaker also includes new interviews (probably about just DV, but still) and, tantalizingly, "footage from a recent project." Because Lynch's digital love affair began when he started shooting Inland Empire in DV, one assumes that it's the project in question. If it, however, at least one person is a bit alarmed.

According to Brendon at film ick - a massive, massive Lynch fan - "The...scene on the DVD looks like an awful, dreadful mistake." He offers a detailed summary of the scene, as well as an admirably clear explanation of the inexplicable things that transpire therein and, in the end, reaches the depressing conclusion that Lynch has "seemingly abandoned all of his skills, [and] turned out something that appears, at best, to be indifferent or a little careless, or at worst, to be a lazy, cynical pastiche of his former glories with all of the details out of joint." Oooooh dear oh dear.

What are you people waiting for? Go order the DVD, and tell us what you think.

[via Arrow in the Head]