Posts

ON BOUNCING BACK Last October, we talked about the practicalities of saying “No.” Now—let’s get real about being on the receiving end of that word. I don’t have to tell you that this creative journey involves so many “no’s” that there exists an entire shadow vocabulary built to communicate essentially the same message. Whether it’s “not right for us at the moment,” “ahead of its time,” “out of our budget” or the infamous soft pass, you are no stranger to this word....

Music videos have existed for longer than you probably think—going at least as far back as the 1960s, when record companies began releasing clips of performance by artists like Bobbie Gentry and Buck Owens as promo clips to local TV. But it wasn’t until MTV hit cable lines in the early 1980s that the form really came into its own, becoming an indispensible part of the music industry ecosystem and serving as a proving ground for an entire generation of soon-to-be feature film auteurs including Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Sofia Coppola....

If you’re an aspiring screenwriter, getting specific insight from reliable industry sources is great way to enhance your skillset. And on September 27, Film Independent’s Writers Salon brought in three acclaimed screenwriters to discuss the adaptation of preexisting material both fictive and historical. Moderated by Emmy-award winning screenwriter/director Jane Anderson (The Wife, How to Make an American Quilt, Olive Kitteridge), the conversation was well rounded, featuring a diverse set of writers with varying techniques, including Billy Ray (Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games, Shattered Glass), Phyllis Nagy (Carol, Mrs....

Missed the ceremony? Don’t worry, check out our YouTube channel for a full roundup of this year’s winners and acceptance speeches. But until then, here are your 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards Winners. BEST FEATURE – Spotlight BEST DIRECTOR – Tom McCarthy, Spotlight BEST FEMALE LEAD – Brie Larson, Room BEST MALE LEAD – Abraham Attah, Beasts of No Nation BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE – Mya Taylor, Tangerine BEST SUPPORTING MALE – Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation BEST SCREENPLAY – Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer, Spotlight BEST EDITING – Tom McArdle, Spotlight BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – The Look of Silence BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – Ed Lachman, Carol BEST FIRST FEATURE – The Diary of a Teenage Girl BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY – Emma Donoghue, Room JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD – Krisha ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD – Spotlight BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM – Son of Saul PIAGET PRODUCERS AWARD – Mel Eslyn KIEHL’S SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD – Felix Thompson, King Jack TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD – Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Incorruptible Thanks for watching....

Behind every (fill in the blank) great/glorious/funny/scary/sad story told on film is an equally great/glorious/funny/scary (yes, probably sometimes) sad story: the one about how the whole thing went from being an idea in a brain (probably many years ago) to a big screen premiere at a big-time Festival. In this Film/Maker Q/A blog series, our LA Film Fest programmers interview our LA Film Fest filmmakers to discover the stories behind the story....

Nothing happens during the making of a movie or TV show—good or bad—without baring the telltale fingerprints of the resourceful individuals hustling across town from meeting to meeting, connecting the dots and making it all happen. They’re the true movers-and-shakers. So ask yourself: am I a mover and a shaker? If you answered “yes” then you should seriously consider applying for the 2016 Film Independent Producing Lab, which is currently accepting applications through this coming Monday, June 27....

Unusually, the true origins of these sorts of indefatigable pop culture phenomena are hard to pinpoint; the product of many disparate influences, with no clear center. Not so with our modern horror-movie conceptualization of the zombie, which owes its entire existence to one singular Big Bang moment: the release of George A. Romero’s iconic 1968 indie-horror classic, Night of the Living Dead. If you’re a fan of horror movies—or of movies in general, really—you’d probably already seen Living Dead....

Director: Jennifer Arnold Producers: Jennifer Arnold, Patti Lee, Jeffrey Soros Executive Producer: Joan Huang Financing: Production Companies (Cherry Sky Films, Considered Entertainment); Private Investors; Grants (Sundance Documentary Fund, Cinereach, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Elle/Garnier & Film Independent Director’s Fellowship); Broadcast pre-sales (HBO Documentary Films, ABC Australia) Production: Initial shoot of 3 months in Kenya and 2 weeks in Sweden/Switzerland plus pick-ups of 2 weeks in Sweden/Switzerland Shooting Format: HD (Panasonic HVX) Screening Format: HD cam World Premiere: 2010 Sundance Film Festival Awards: Sundance Film Festival (Nominated: Grand Jury Prize); Nantucket Film Festival – Audience Award and Adrienne Shelly Director’s Award; Humanitas Prize for Documentary; hotDOCS – Top Ten Audience Favorite; Women in Film/National Geographic All Roads Film Award; Emmy Nomination Best Documentary; Best Documentary NAMIC Vision Awards Montana Cine International Film Festival – Best of Category, Social/Political Issues Documentary, Best of Category – Human Rights Issues Documentary & Special Jury Award....

This week, a timid nursing assistant gets a new lease on life when she and a neighborhood loner track down the degenerates who broke into her house, in writer/director Macon Blair’s award-winning 2017 feature film debut: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. THE FILM Type: Narrative Feature Director: Macon Blair Producers: Mette-Marie Kongsved, Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani Budget: $1.5 million Financing: Netflix Production: 30 days, March-April, 2016 Shooting Format: ARRI Alexa Mini Screening Format: DCP World Premiere: Sundance 2017 Distributor: Netflix Awards: 2017 Sundance Film Festival: Winner—Grand Jury Prize DEVELOPMENT AND FINANCING Actor and writer Macon Blair had always planned to expand into directing at some point, but I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore began only as a vague idea for a character: a nurse who had gotten fed up with humanity and lost her ability to care....

Once upon a time, Amanda Marshall started as an intern at Ambush Entertainment. After many years of saying “yes” to the tasks no one else wanted to do, she now works as the President of that very same company, re-named Cold Iron Pictures. Amanda has produced such films as the Sundance Film Festival selection and A24 acquisition, Swiss Army Man, starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, and executive produced Marielle Heller’s Gotham and Spirit Award-winning film The Diary of a Teenage Girl....

The same could be said for Film Independent’s Directors Close-Up (DCU) which likewise seeks to utilize an innate sense of proximal intimacy to a variety of practical ends; whether learning how to assemble the perfect cast, direct dynamic genre films or to create the visual language of a modern day sci-fi classic. The annual five-week event—one of our hottest (and most star-studded) tickets of the year—consists of five unique evenings, each focused on a specific aspect of the art of filmmaking, direct from the experiences of current awards season favorites....

“Something that I hear people say is, ‘Distribution isn’t really my job, I just want to make movies,’” says producer Jennifer Dubin, one of the leaders of Film Independent’s upcoming Producers Toolkit ’15: Demystifying (DIY)stribution. But in 2008, when Dubin and her producing partner Cora Olson were exploring options for the release of their Sundance charmer Good Dick, they weren’t finding any offers that they liked from traditional distribution outlets....

DAY FIVE If this was your first day at the festival, you may have wondered if you missed the memo on Hawaiian shirt day. Leis and flowered apparel are flooding the ArcLight for the Out of State screening, Ciara Lacy’s documentary a displaced Hawaiian rediscovering his roots. Meanwhile in Culver City, it does look like a luau exploded in here. I have a stacked schedule today, and the opening film for the Shorts Program 4 is strangely compelling—even going so far as to shape the way I perceive the rest of my day....

Making movies can be a grueling experience, no matter if you’re a traffic cop on a big-budget animated blockbuster trying to parse fractal studio workflow diagrams; or an overtaxed multi-hyphenate laboring on a low-budget indie, your spine slowly being pancaked into fossilized trilobite by the number of hats you’re to wear. But! It takes a very special kind of lunatic-masochist to attempt anything so demonically challenging as an independent animated feature....

It’s definitely underselling it to say that we’re living in extraordinary times. The world right now (and I believe this is a clinical term) is totally bugnuts. No one really knows what’s going on, how we got here, or where things will end up. But whatever the case, once the story of the great coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is written, it’s sure to include plenty of unfathomable tributaries and things that, right now in the moment, are impossible for us to see clearly or predict....

Panelists included Brown Girls director Sam Bailey and Open TV creator Aymar Christian (who collaborated closely with the Brown Girls team) alongside The North Pole writer and producer Josh Healey and The North Pole director Yvan Iturriaga. Aaliyah Williams, Vice President of Digital Content and Production at Macro, served as moderator. Sam Bailey and Brown Girls screenwriter Fatima Asghar were acquainted through the art scene in Chicago. Bailey knew she was the best candidate to helm the project at an early reading of the script, writing a note to her colleague Christian that read, “I have to direct this....

Hollywood’s theatrical distribution model of yore – and the theater-going experience itself – has been on the precipice of an unceremonious demise for years it seems, first choked by a narrowing of demographics and then finally brought to its knees by the concurrent factors of a global pandemic and the ongoing streaming wars. During COVID, worldwide theater closures were predicted to be the final nail in the coffin, when studios saw little choice but to debut blockbusters once destined for splashy theatrical debuts straight to SVOD....

The idea of a “safe space” can mean many things. Taken literally, a safe space is an actual physical location where a person—or baby, say—can survive and thrive. But for an artist, a safe space may simply mean a helpful, nurturing environment where creators are free to experiment and, if necessary, fail, failure often being the greatest teaching tool of them all. Both interpretations of “safe space” are relevant to Sian Heder’s new indie drama Tallulah, which follows an impulsive, potentially unstable young women (Elliot Page) as she makes the fateful decision to kidnap a seemingly neglected infant and claim it as her own....

Why take your movie to a film festival? It seems like a funny question—doesn’t everyone want to premiere at Los Angeles Film Festival or Sundance or Toronto? But earlier this month when festival insider Peter Belsito of SydneysBuzz came to Film Independent to talk about festival strategy, he asked it quite seriously. “They only cost money,” he said. “You don’t make any money at a festival. Why do you want to go there?...

OCTOBER SKY (1998, dir. Joe Johnston) “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King’s quote above perfectly encapsulates the spirit of aerospace engineer Homer Hickam, whose unyielding determination to break the mold of what was expected of a poor Coalwood, WV boy in 1957 prompted him to become an engineer for the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command and later, an aerospace engineer for NASA....