It’s this sort of remote desert setting—Joshua Tree, to be exact—that very effectively serves as the setting of director Elle Callahan’s debut horror feature Head Count, which premiered in the Nightfall section of the LA Film Festival last year, now playing in theaters and available on SVOD. Inspired in part by recent horror hits including It Follows and The Witch, the film follows a large group of young friends on an ill-fated holiday into the California desert, during which they seemingly summon an ancient evil called the “Hisji....

“It’s ridiculous,” said Film Independent President Josh Welsh, Amato’s friendly inquisitor for the morning. “Some of my background I can tell you, some I can’t,” joked Amato, who credited his earliest exposure to filmmaking to the Columbia College Chicago, which he described an “outlaw” college, noting that at the time of his enrollment the school wasn’t even accredited. After moving with his then-girlfriend (now wife), a dancer, and a handful of her girlfriends to New York in the early ‘80s, Amato—an accomplished musician—played with various groups at such storied downtown venues as CBGB’s and Danceteria, as well as working on film projects and acting and performing in one of theater’s very first jukebox musicals, about Buddy Holly....

“I’m not interested in the crime, really,” said the L.A. Confidential scribe at a Film Independent at LACMA screening of his latest directorial effort, Legend. “The crime is something everyone is going to have seen before.” Helgeland said that what makes a crime story stand out is the dynamic between the characters. In Legend, Tom Hardy plays both Ronald and Reggie Kray, twin brothers and mob kingpins in 1960s London....

Shelton was in conversation with actress Illeana Douglas, host of TCM’s Trailblazing Women series, who had asked her if she thinks of herself as a female director or just a director. The two-time Film Independent Spirit Award winner (My Effortless Brilliance won the Someone To Watch Award in 2008 and Humpday won the John Cassavetes Award in 2009) said that working primarily in her hometown of Seattle may have something to do with why she found the question strange....

And last month, June 25, the entertainment industry’s premiere gilt-edged industry advocacy group and (per Wikipedia) “professional honorary organization”—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—took further steps to better reshape itself per a more modern, inclusive Hollywood. Namely, it Academy invited 928 new members to join its ranks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 49% of new invitees were female and 38% people of color. But wait! The most exciting part is that 13 of these new inductees are Film Independent Fellows—filmmakers who have been supported in our Artist Development labs and programs or in Global Media Makers....

Late in her Filmmaker Keynote on Day Two of the 2020 Film Independent Forum, Lulu Wang recalled that just seven years prior she’d been on the opposite side of the dais, watching from the audience as Ava DuVernay delivered her rousing version of the speech in 2013. At the time, Wang was in attendance that year as part of Project Involve—a fruitful hitch that would result in the production of her short Touch, which through a circuitous set of falling dominoes would eventually lead to her acclaimed 2019 sophomore feature, The Farewell....

Perhaps the biggest indie movie success story of the year, Lulu Wang’s autobiographical family drama The Farewell debuted in mid-July to critical hosannas and boffo art house B.O. Based on the Chinese-American filmmaker’s own experiences reconnecting with estranged family via the well-intentioned deception of an ailing matriarch, Wang first told the story on a 2016 episode of This American Life—a full two years after her stint as a Fellow in the 2014 edition of Film Independent’s Project Involve....

Here, Bell talks about the inspiration she gained through writing letters home as a child and why she won’t wear pajamas when she writes. Who was the first person you contacted when you heard you were nominated for a Spirit Award? My husband Scott Campbell. He’s been with me for all of it and then some. Will you approach writing your acceptance speech in the same way you do a screenplay?...

Among other consumer benefits, one major upside to the increasing niche-ification of popular culture has been the continuing emergence of esoteric micro-genres of film and TV. Twenty years ago, you might not necessarily think of “horror documentaries” as its own subgenre. Sure, there were documentaries that maybe fell a little more on the creepy/unsettling side, but it was rare that a nonfiction film would be tailored to appeal to a horror-first genre audience....

We previously talked to Vidiots Foundation Executive Director Maggie Mackay—former Senior Programmer at Film Independent—about how coronavirus lockdown has impacted but also emphasized the venerable LA film archive’s mission, and brought its community closer together. Vidiots still plans to open doors (having moved on from its historic Santa Monica in 2017) at its new Eastside home later this year/early 2021. In the meantime, the organization is still making moves and looking ahead....

Indisputably, Anthony and Joe Russo have as enviable a career as any pair of filmmakers in history. The most remarkable part? That this remains true even subtracting for the fact that the brothers co-directed 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, literally the highest-grossing movie in Hollywood history (the duo’s 2018 sleeper, Avengers: Infinity War, ranks only a pitiful fifth.) Even in an alternate universe where the unassuming Cleveland-born duo are somehow without dueling solid-gold swimming pools shaped like’s Thor’s Mjölnir, The Russo Bros....

Congratulations on Las Elegidas inclusion in Un Certain Regard! Where were you when you heard the news?
I was in Mexico wrapping the reshoots for Las Elegidas. We wrapped four hours ahead of schedule and my director called me into a corner and said, “I have to tell you something.” I thought, “Oh no, are we going to have a fight now that we finally finished?” He just flipped his cellphone and I saw the symbol of Cannes on the screen....

Above all, hope is predicated on the belief that all conditions are temporary, trending toward positive. And there’s truly no reason to believe this is not still the case. The world will now be different than the one we perhaps imagined it might have been two months ago, but even in the midst of dire CDC projections, conspiracy theories and the utter boredom of sheltering within the same four walls every damn day, make no mistake: people are uniting to help and inspire each other in ways that will carry us through to the end of this test — and far beyond....

Take the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards, which this morning announced the nominees of its 36th annual awards ceremony, set to air Thursday, April 22 at 10:00 pm ET and 7:00 pm PT — a temporary (and exciting!) break from the show’s usual spot as a live daytime event the day before the Oscars. Also new this year: for the first time in history, the Spirit Awards will be recognizing outstanding achievement in uniqueness of vision, innovation and boldness of vision in TV and streaming as well as feature film....

What hasn’t been getting as much attention is Sealey’s decision to do her part to bridge the gender gap in the film industry by shooting the film with a crew made up almost entirely of women. We sat down with Sealey to talk about that decision, how it affected her set, and how she approaches crewing up on an indie budget. When it comes to crewing up on little-to-no budget, how do you make sure you find the right people?...

Producers: Malik Bader, Stan Bader Budget: Low $200,000s, including deliverables. Financing: Self financed through mortgage on his own house and additional loans. Shooting Format: Super 16mm Screening Format: HD master Awards and Nominations: Chicago Award at the Chicago International Film Festival. Cinema of the Future Award at Buenos Aires Film Festival Synopsis: In 2005, two documentary filmmakers embarked on a journey to peer into the daily lives of ordinary career criminals....

“The best thing was the creative autonomy, the absolute joy of being able to dive into this process and know that nobody was telling me how to do it.” Succinctly put, this is how filmmaker Talia Lugacy described what she felt was so special and unique about making her microbudget feature, This is Not a War Story. While there are certainly plenty of challenges that come with making an entire film for less than $500,000, each of the five filmmakers nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at this year’s 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards leaned into the positive, detailing how they brought their visions to life despite limited means during the seventh installation of the Directors Close-Up series on February 23....

Indeed, 12 years after her death, the power of Nina Simone’s music and the fearlessness of her civil rights message—a black woman “speaking the truth to power” as Garbus puts it—resonates as strongly as ever, given the epidemic of police violence against black men and women nationwide, as well as the recent church massacre in Charleston. The film, which premiered on Netflix this past Friday, is the kind of documentary that will often be called “unflinching....

No one in human history has yet escaped the terrifying twin specters of decline and death. There you are one day, your entire life stretched out before you like a circuitous mountain hiking trail, reaching up and disappearing far beyond a distant horizon. The next day—splat! The trail has suddenly become a hard theatrical flat, something to brutally smash your nose into upon any attempt to claim a single step....

But maybe you’re curious how some of those prior subjects have turned out. Well hey, you’re in luck! Once again it’s time for another FiSpo Update highlighting the recent achievements of previous Fiscal Spotlight subjects. Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program opens the door to nonprofit funding for independent filmmakers and media artists. The projects and makers participating in the program express a uniqueness of vision, celebrate diversity and advance the craft of filmmaking through the creation of these special works....