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And while Americans’ gluttonous food obsession is hardly a phenomenon contained to late November, Thanksgiving is for all intents and purposes our national excuse to express a full-throated (and full-stomached) love of cuisine otherwise relegated to its own niche corners of foodie culture. But for this week at least, it’s okay to be hungry. Of course, food has played as major a role in cinema as any other basic human biological function, from the sprawling bowls of pasta in the works of Martin Scorsese to the last decade’s trend of thoughtfully investigative, health-leaning food docs such as Food Inc....

The objective? To expand the definition of the word and act as a call to action for Hollywood and the film industry. The four Saturday panels covered issues of representation and acceptance both in front of and behind the camera, regardless of how people choose to define themselves. AUTHENTIC TRANS VISIBILITY In the first panel of the day, Cis in Trans World: Transgender Visibility, trans actor Rachel Crowl (of 2017 LA Muse entry And Then There Was Eve) talked about the importance of trans exposure....

Maine is Curran’s feature debut, featuring stunning location photography from cinematographer Sofian El Fani and an impressive supporting cast, including Rosie Perez and Teyonah Parris. While in development, the film also support from the Film Independent’s Fast Track program at the LA Film Festival, which helped Curran and her team secure some much-needed film equipment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRVo1wMDx84 A film about grief and loss may seem like a tough sell in a summer movie season dominated by fantasy and escapism....

But whether precariously perambulating down an icy Main Street clutching a scoop of Java Cow ice cream or shakily trying to hold our stomachs together on an undulating shuttle after one too many trips to the open bar, Film Independent wasn’t at Sundance/Slamdance just to party. We were also there to celebrate the accomplishments of our 41 individual Film Independent Fellows with projects at the two Festivals—including 2019 Producing Lab Fellow Hurriyah Muhammad, winner of the Sundance Producers Award for Farewell Armor....

One solution is FestPicks, a new streaming platform created to catalogue and provide access to a wide variety of documentary and narrative features, all of which have played at major film festivals. Operating on a revenue-share model for creators based on streaming rentals, the service seeks to provide an outlet for festival-minted filmmakers to get their work in front eager audiences, as well as provide film fans with a way to find and watch hard-to-find festival titles....

People will often talk about a character’s journey when discussing storytelling. And a lot of the time, these so-called journeys are purely abstract or simply metaphors for self-actualization—like Arthur Fleck’s “journey” to becoming a clown-themed supervillain in Joker, or Reginald Dwight’s “journey” to becoming Elton John in Rocketman. But frequently, the journeys at the heart of our favorite works of narrative art are far more literal, centering on stories of displacement and relocation; stories, sadly, that more relevant than ever....

To varying degrees, life under corona-quarantine has forced all of us into lives of itchy solitude regardless of how self-assured we may have moved through the world prior to COVID-19. But for many people out there—those hailing from marginalized communities and those whose self-identities are misunderstood or maligned, for example—a life of quiet yearning was (and is) a state of being that requires no governmental “Safer at Home” measure. For those in the queer community, while its true that life in the 21st century has improved by leaps and bounds, what’s true for a demographic as a whole level doesn’t necessarily represent the experiences of each individual....

Screenwriting can be a lonely craft. While filmmaking is a large collaboration full of energy and compromise, all too often the start of that journey is one person, alone with their laptop, writing a script. We were drawn to a writing partnership, and to the episodic space in general, to avoid this solitude—as two comedy writers who hate being alone with their thoughts, the idea of a writer’s room, or at the very least a partner to bounce our ideas off, seemed invaluable....

Jonathan King at Participant asked if I’d read a script by a young writer he liked named Justin Simien. It definitely showed promise so I called Justin and we talked briefly. I told him to keep me posted on his projects and then forgot about it. Two years later I’m running the Los Angeles Film Festival. We are in the thick of it and my awesome assistant, Mel Jones, keeps bugging me about reading the Dear White People script....

Sure, there are plenty of things that narrative filmmakers need to worry about. Things like drunken actors, waning daylight or the sudden loss of key location. But when compared to the sorts of ethical, legal and existential questions vexing and bedeviling nonfiction filmmakers—uncooperative film subjects, reluctant interviewees, niggling lawsuits, the occasional accusation of exploitation—simply trying to get your leading man sober enough to deliver one or two lines upright without looking into the camera starts to look like a walk in the park....

At last night’s Directors Close-Up, the 29-year-old writer/director of Whiplash, one of the year’s most exciting and critically acclaimed films, offered advice to young filmmakers hoping to one day follow in those footsteps: make a film that’s personal. The genesis of Whiplash was his personal experience as a young drummer with a “borderline psychotic” teacher. After six years of trying and failing to get projects off the ground, Chazelle said, this is the one that succeeded because “it was a world I knew well....

The couple’s approach, from the very beginning, was to make their project as inexpensive—and therefore as low-risk—as possible for themselves and their investors. “Even if you can find somebody to give you more money, it’s not necessarily the best decision,” Pullapilly said. “We didn’t want to take on the risk [of investors’ money] and then fail,” Gaudet added. “But what if we took something low-risk and then tried to knock it out of the ballpark?...

Venturing into the festival circuit? Writers/directors/actors Jennifer Prediger and Jess Weixler of Apartment Troubles have been there and done that and are here to share their story of their own film’s 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival premiere and their advice to newcomers to the festival networking scene. Film Independent’s Jade Estrada spoke with both women—Jess pulled over on the side of the road and Jennifer in New York, in her kitchen putting away dishes....

At a time when one out of every three children in the U.S. grows up without a father, Emily Abt’s documentary Daddy Don’t Go—now in the final days of its Kickstarter campaign—offers intimate portraits of four racially diverse, economically disadvantaged dads who shatter the deadbeat dad stereotype, redefining what it means to be a good father for all men. The topic of parenthood holds special relevance for Abt; She’s a mother of two who has managed to succeed as an independent filmmaker—one of Variety magazine’s “Top 10 Directors to Watch,” she’s produced and directed documentaries for PBS, OWN, MTV, Showtime and the Sundance Channel—while performing the juggling act of raising two young children....

For independent film to survive, it’s critical that new and unique voices be given the opportunity to thrive, create and tell their stories. Enter Project Involve, Film Independent’s signature mentorship and diversity program. Now in its 23rd year, Project Involve seeks to foster the careers of talented filmmakers from communities traditionally underrepresented in the film industry. Projects written, directed, produced, shot and edited by Project Involve Fellows include Dear White People, Free In Deed, French Dirty, The Land, Las Elegidas, LUV, Margarita with a Straw, Mosquita Y Mari, Pariah, Sleight, Undertow and many more....

Name: Peter Kaufman Discipline: Entertainment Lawyer Arts Circle Member Since: 2012 What led you to your career as an entertainment lawyer? Well, I thought I wanted to be an actor, but I wasn’t sure I had the skills to pull that off. I’m creative, and wanted to work with creative people. I had always been good at making a good argument, and representing creative people struck me as an ideal way to work with and to serve the creative community....

For a mere consumer of immersive art, just the opportunity to smorgasbord-sample such a rich slate of programming would, on its own, probably be enough to inspire an impromptu pilgrimage down to the heart of Silicon Beach. But we’re not here solely to whisk users away on fantastical outer space adventures or inside the complexities of far-flung struggle. We also want to empower the next generation of immersive storytellers through actionable advice, industry insight and thoughtful case studies....

The films themselves are often dark but always honest, their perversions expressive and earned rather than bluntly hammered. As we follow the cosmic tendrils of Lynch’s brain backwards toward their origin, it’s only natural to ask: why does this guy see the world the way he sees it? One answer may lay in Victor Fleming 1939 MGM classic, whose enchantments reach even further back, to its position as an early television staple for impressional baby boomers developing their imaginations and material predilections in the glow of the family’s suburban RCA console....

So how many scripts get a recommend? About two percent. Which means roughly ninety-eight percent of spec scripts are dead on arrival. Many of these scripts make the same mistakes. Here’s my take on the ten most common mistakes reported by the studio and network readers who recently visited my UCLA class: The scenes are void of meaningful conflict I have found that roughly five percent of writers naturally write in professional-level conflict, by which I mean the kind of conflict that hooks a reader and makes them want to keep reading....

Veterans Day is a federal public holiday that always falls on the 11th of November – but why is that? The day’s origins date back to World War I. At 11:00 am Paris local time on November 11, 1918, the Armistice of Compiègne was signed to officially end WWI. In honor of this special day, we’ve curated 10 films (and one limited series!) that embody the values and spirit of the service members across all five branches: the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Navy....