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Watch the entire panel here: After showing brief clips from each film, Roughan dove directly into the nuts-and-bolts of production: “How did you think you were going to get financed versus how you actually did?” she asked. For Ahn, whose queer-themed coming-of-age tale set amid LA’s Koreatown district premiered to rave reviews at Sundance in January, the money question was one of recalibrating expectations. “When I started, I think we thought we could just find one investor,” he said....

RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT Guests of honor: Mariem Pérez Riera (director/producer), Brent Miller (producer), Rita Moreno (featured subject); moderated by filmmaker Natalie Morales About: Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It illuminates the humor and grace of Hollywood icon Rita Moreno, including the lesser-known struggles she faced on the path to stardom: pernicious Hollywood sexism, abuse, a toxic relationship with Marlon Brando and a serious bout of depression in the years before she emerged as an Oscar winner for (the original) West Side Story....

It’s a great time for documentary films. Films as varied as Blackfish and Amy have found a home in the mainstream market, gaining distribution and having successful theatrical runs. At last month’s Film Independent Forum, Simon Kilmurry, Executive Director of the International Documentary Association (IDA) sat down with Josh Braun, Co-President of Submarine Entertainment, and talked about the elements successful docs have in common. Documentary filmmaker Laura Gabbert (City of Gold) moderated the evening....

As soon as the clock strikes midnight on October 1, the spirit of Halloween becomes inescapable, from seasonal aisles at the grocery store to pumpkin-flavored coffee—and most importantly, movies. During those stay-at-home nights when the weather in LA is “cold” enough for big sweaters and hot chocolate, your fright-flick options are endless. You could go for the occult with The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, or spooky sci-fi with The Thing and Alien....

After watching a few Westerns it’s easy to pick up on what makes the good ones stand out: that gritty Old West spirit, exciting tales of frontier justice and (of course) the macho, rough-but-handsome gunslingers. I say “macho” because apart from the resident ingénue playing damsel-in-distress, 19th-century frontier life wasn’t particularly female-dominated—at least not as depicted by Hollywood). But there were exceptions, and then there was Joan Crawford. Crawford bought the film rights to a novel by Roy Chanslor and sold them to Republic Studios, thus beginning the production of the unlikely Western Johnny Guitar (1954)....

Shot on location in Miami’s Liberty Square neighborhood, Liberty tells the story of best friends Milagros and Alex, who have been chosen to dance at their housing project’s new groundbreaking ceremony—only to be confronted with intruders, interruptions by construction workers and bureaucratic red tape as they search for a space to practice, all the while holding on to the one thing they’ve always counted on: each other. In anticipation of the milestone short’s Thursday night debut, we asked Liberty’s creators and 2018 Project Involve Fellows—writer/director Faren Humes, producers Diana Ward, Katherine Fisher and Diego Najera and cinematographer Zamarin Wahdat (cinematographer)—to recount their experiences making the film....

The uproarious evening was also significant for its all-Asian cast, marshaled together by guest director Randall Park, hot off his own stab at rom-com immortality opposite Ali Wong in the buzzy Netflix hit Always Be My Maybe. Casting himself in a series of bit speaking parts, Park ceded the role of Billy Crystal’s “Harry” to Burning lead—and longtime Walking Dead zombie-fleer—Steven Yeun, with Meg Ryan’s “Sally” rebooted with signature adorkable charm by PEN15 star (and burgeoning Fi Presents regular) Maya Erskine....

In our inaugural Sloan Salon, scientists Dr. Swati Mohan (Mars 2020 Guidance, Navigation & Control Operations Lead at NASA’s JPL) and Tracy Drain (Lead Flight Systems Engineer, Europa Clipper mission at NASA’s JPL)—two women on the front line of cutting-edge aerospace technologies—addressed the importance of their work as well as how their gender and race factors into their continued success beyond societal expectations. For over a decade, Film Independent and the Alfred P....

The National Geographic Documentary Films and NEON-distributed feature is as much about the Kraffts’ as documentarians as it is their natural subjects. Fire of Love spans the arc of their lives as they uncover the secrets of volcanoes unto their death, a spoiler presented at the beginning of the film. [The couple met their fate at the hands of the 1991 Mount Unzen eruption in Japan, where they were trapped in the pyroclastic flow....

Sadly, Vidiots shuttered its physical presence in Santa Monica in 2017 in response to increasing costs. But it never went away—not really. And now, after three years of hardcore business planning and a search for a new space, Vidiots has announced that it will be launching a new chapter in Fall of 2020, at the onetime Eagle Theatre (which until recently had operated as a church) in Eagle Rock, on LA’s Northeast side....

How the times have changed. Now there’s no denying the sophistication, ambition and value of episodic programming. We don’t even call it TV anymore, as serialized long-form narrative storytelling has propagated across a variety of devices and delivery, co-mingling with different mediums and cross-pollinating genres. If a feature film is like a haiku—compact, beautiful in its rigidity of structure—then episodic series are like a big bucket of magnetic poetry. Today, Film Independent is proud to announce the six new projects and seven new Fellows who are ready to dump that bucket out and start playing....

On Thursday, August 27, the three gathered together on Zoom (“This has disturbing echoes of The Dating Game,” Berger joked) for a roundtable discussion touching on everything from favorite projects, to career advice for young filmmakers, to the unpredictable evolution of the indie film business in the face of new filmmaking technologies and distribution platforms. Presented by Film Independent Education, Fi’s Coffee Talks series takes place biweekly on Thursdays and most weeks features a live, interactive audience Q&A....

The filmmakers? Karyn Kusama—whose filmography includes Destroyer (2018), The Invitation (2015) and Jennifer’s Body (2009) as well as TV work, including recent episodes of HBO’s The Outsider—and Rian Johnson, whose credits include Knives Out (2019) and The Last Jedi (2017) and classic episodes of AMC’s Breaking Bad. After a brief introduction by Fi’s Paul Cowling, the two filmmakers were left alone to discuss the creative processes, their thoughts on current events and many other aspects of movie-making and life-living....

Producing a film you’re not passionate about is “like sleeping with somebody you don’t like, every night, forever,” according to Nina Jacobson, producer of The Hunger Games films. Jacobson, a former senior-level executive at Dreamworks and Universal and former president of the Walt Disney Motion Picture Group, said that as an executive, “you can borrow the passion of others sometimes. As a producer, there’s no borrowing. You’ve got to love it....

“10 Questions with LA Film Fest Filmmaker Spotlights” is a series of posts to help you get to know our Festival filmmakers and their films just a little bit better. In this installment, the brilliant minds behind the horror pic Delivery tell us a little about their film and themselves. Brian Netto & Adam Schindler FILM: Delivery / The Beyond In this unnerving chiller, Kyle and Rachel Massy are a young couple who have agreed to document their first pregnancy for a reality show....

On April 28 at the 2019 Film Independent Forum, attendees heard firsthand from the creators of two very successful, very different episodic series: Quarter Life Poetry’s husband-and-wife creators Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr., and It’s Not About Jimmy Keene, from writer/director Caleb Jaffe. The panel also included Keene executive producers—and fellow marrieds—Jim Frohna and Diana Kunce. Their short Eve played at Sundance in 2018. The panel was moderated by Empire Co-Executive Producer Wendy Calhoun....

Taking us from their (then) short’s inception at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts all the way through to its bigger-budget, Spike Lee-produced feature version, Bristol (the film’s director and cowriter) and Bailey (its screenwriter) spoke to the fruitful process of bringing their project—which presciently delves into issues of police brutality against African Americans—to Netflix, the awards stage and beyond. Watch the full Coffee Talk recording below and keep reading for all the highlights!...

In 2019, the Film Independent Forum introduced a brand-new keynote to its already robust programming slate—a conversation with Minding the Gap director Bing Liu. A year later, #FiForum20 (now reimagined as a weeklong virtual event) is thrilled to welcome yet another nonfiction auteur to the digital stage for our second-ever Documentary Keynote: Dawn Porter, director of acclaimed docs Gideon’s Army (2013), Spies of Mississippi (2014), Trapped (2016) and the new and ultra-timely John Lewis: Good Trouble, a profile of the late, great Civil Rights leader who passed away just last month on July 17....

The series stars Emily Mortimer (Lars and the Real Girl, The Newsroom) and Dolly Wells (Blunt Talk, Bridget Jones’s Diary) playing fictionalized versions of themselves, childhood friends comically struggling to merge their professional lives without sacrificing their friendship. In season one, after a bad breakup, Dolly becomes Emily’s assistant. In season two, they write a play together about their lives and cast Olivia Wilde and Evan Rachel Wood to play them....

Dear White People When: February 3 Where: DVD/VOD Director: Justin Simien Starring: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson Why We’re Excited: If you missed it in theaters, now is your chance to see writer/director (and Project Involve Fellow) Justin Simien’s debut feature, which has given him a lot to celebrate. A comedic portrait of four black students at an Ivy League college raises social awareness and tackles controversial subject matter with a sense of humor and undeniable wit....