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But as the record industry began to crater and streaming sites stepped in to become our default means of ingesting music, soundtrack albums have become less and less essential—and, frequently, non-existent. Which is too bad. At their best, soundtrack albums are more than just a collection of music (often dubiously) “from and inspired by” the movies they’re derived from. A good soundtrack album is a time capsule: a snapshot, frozen in time, of a specific pop culture moment....

Even if the term “exquisite corpse” isn’t familiar to you, you’re probably still familiar with the basic concept. According to Wikipedia, exquisite corpse “is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled, with each collaborator adding to a composition in sequence, allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.” So basically, you take a piece of paper, write a few sentences of story, then fold the paper down to hide the majority of what you’ve written, passing the paper along to be continued by the next person....

Why unearth such feelings? Possibly to bring closure? Possibly to remind you of a love forgotten, hoping you remember a time when a love so pure lit your path, into the unknown? At an in-person Q&A with cast and crew following the August 26 Film Independent Presents Really Love screening at the Harmony Gold Theater in Hollywood, Williams talked about how the Baltimore-shot, Washington D.C.-set love story came to be… Working on the script for two years in-between her full-time jobs—including one as a Film Independent Artist Development Manager—Williams and writer Felicia Pride (Screenwriting Lab, 2016) knew they had to tell this story....

For the next two weeks, our Film Independent Presents SVOD playlist will be a tribute to March’s Women’s History Month. In fact, there was so much great work we wanted to highlight that we’re splitting the list in two, with Part Two spilling over next week into April. The five women spotlighted this week are some of the most exciting and inspiring auteurs to have ever stalked the ground behind video village, selected here for the diversity of their filmmaking styles and—for many—their service to a higher purpose; using their creative voices to speak for people who often can’t speak for themselves....

I frequently enjoy videos by artists I otherwise have opinion about (Drake’s “Hotline Bling”), or even actively dislike (Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”). But while the worlds of pop, hip-hop and electronic music have in recent years regularly generated a plethora of visually dynamic and formally inventive video clips, I can’t help but feel there’s one genre lagging behind—rock (both alternative and indie). It wasn’t always like this. All through the ‘80s and ‘90s rock bands were making competitive videos left and right, often eschewing linear short-form narrative in favor of a fast-paced smorgasbord of disparate film formats, dynamic textures, high-concept visual trickery and energetic performance footage....

And seeing as the players’ manual definition of the DM is “the organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges of an adventure while maintaining a realistic continuity of the game,” what better analogue in the film world is there, really, other than the Creative Producer? Tasked not merely with making a director’s harebrained ideas a practical reality, but also with managing a project’s progression and creating the framework to support it....

In some ways, I’d argue that indie movies were at their peak in the ‘80s. Not necessarily in terms of popularity, commercial appeal or awards recognition (thought the Film Independent Spirit Awards did begin in 1984), but absolutely yes in terms of authenticity and purity of intent, existing as they did in a near-total vacuum in the years before the Indiewood boom of the early 1990s. And once Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and the rest of that era’s indie auteur rebels group broke into the mainstream, things were never quite the same....

Viewers were riveted as the episode opened with Sarah Paulson as Clark, negotiating the legalities of a messy divorce before rushing to the murder trial she was prosecuting (and for which she was extremely late). About half the episode takes place in a courtroom. The rest follows Clark’s family life, case preparation and the media pressure about her looks. When the show ended, the audience was graced with appearances from the show creators, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, as well as eight other guests, including Paulson herself....

Being a filmmaker is “like being the weirdo in a John Hughes film,” said Ana Lily Amirpour at last month’s Film Independent Film Forum. “You spend your time trying to change yourself to fit in to a bunch of different stuff, and then in the end you realize it’s better to just be the freaky weirdo that you are, and be friends with the people that are into that.” Amirpour, whose directorial debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night hits theaters this Friday, was part of the panel Breakthrough Genre Directors: A New Wave of Horror....

Just eight days left until the LA Film Fest kicks off—and just nine days left to apply for Film Independent’s Panavision Grant! In celebration of both, we spoke to Denise Milford, cinematographer for Day Out of Days, the film by writer-director and Spirit Award Nominee Zoe Cassavetes which won the Panavision Grant in the spring of last year and will premiere in the Film Fest’s LA Muse section later this month....

Producers: Caveh Zahedi, Greg Watkins Budget: $450,000 Production Companies: Reinventing The Wheel Financing: One investor (an aquaintenance of Caveh’s); Grants: Creative Capital, San Francisco Arts Council, Guggenheim Production Date: 2001 – 2005 Shooting Format: Mini DV Screening Format: Digital World Premiere: Rotterdam 2005 Awards and Nominations: 2005 Gotham Awards, Winner of Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Production I Am A Sex Addict was shot over the course of four years....

At their worst, modern film trailers all but negate the need to actually see the movies themselves. I most recently encountered (and was annoyed by) this phenomenon watching the trailer for Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins. I don’t have any particular bone to pick with FFJ itself. On the contrary, it seems like a perfectly pleasant, feel-good period piece based on the “incredible true story” of the titular heiress: an aspiring though little-talented opera grand dame played by Meryl Streep who, in late middle age during the 1940s, secures a much-publicized concert slot at Carnegie Hall....

The Hunting Ground When: Now Playing Where: Theaters Directors: Kirby Dick Why We’re Excited: Spirit Award Winning filmmaker Kirby Dick, who delivered the powerful documentary, The Invisible War, tackles another controversial and gritty subject for his latest expose. This startling examination of rape crimes on college campuses features a heart-wrenching look inside the homes of the victims and their families, revealing the destructive effects these heinous acts have. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will surely be an eye-opening viewer experience that ignites a fight for change....

What are some of the basic points that need to be covered in a crew deal memo? When you create a deal memo, you want to make sure to protect both the production company and the employee you would like to hire. For this reason, you want to make your deal memo as detailed as possible. I highly advise you to work with a lawyer to help prepare the document so that you fully cover all the rules and stipulations for your production....

High school students today are born filmmakers, in other words—or at least a generation weaned with greater audiovisual literacy, access and natural dexterity than any one previous. Combine that intuition and ability with a teenager’s imagination, energy and earnest need for self-expression, and you have the perfect recipe to create the filmmakers and visual storytellers of tomorrow. Which is why we’re thrilled to introduce our 2020 Future Filmmakers. Featuring 16 outstanding short films written, produced and directed by youth filmmakers from across the country and around the globe, this year’s Future Filmmaker Showcase will be screening—virtually and for free—this Saturday, October 24, beginning at 10:00am PT, to be followed by filmmaker Q&A....

Halim Sabbagh is deeply curious about life and about people. He wants to know what people think deep down underneath everyday blandness and what they’ll do when placed in unfamiliar emotional territory. Sabbagh’s camera does not intrude upon his characters. While staying slightly distant and almost languid, it gives them the space to unfold as people. The results are films that sometimes look like poetry onscreen. A graduate of the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, Sabbagh has directed numerous shorts, TV commercials and corporate films....

As crapshoots go, applying for grants is right up there. Yes, you are way more likely to get the grant than to get hit by lightning, but for anyone whose been rejected time and again, it can sure feel like the likelihood is the about the same. At last month’s Film Independent Forum, a Fund-That-Doc panel revealed what those odds really are at their organizations. Sundance gets up to 2,000 per year for its Sundance Documentary Fund and funds about 3% (60) of those, according to Rhadi Taylor, who finds, cultivates and finances documentary film for the program; Catapult Film Fund selects seven projects from a pool of about 480, says Catapult co-founder Lisa Kleiner Chaonoff; Latino Public Broadcasting funds about 10 out of 100, said Luis Ortiz; and San Francisco Film Society funds about 3 of 250, according to Michele Turnure-Salleo, who heads the San Francisco Film Society’s Filmmaker360 Department....

Together they answered a wide variety of questions, addressed suspicions as to what supposedly makes a “Sundance film” and debunked whether or not “Who you know” is really all that matters. Watch the full session in our Member portal. Not a Member? Become one today. A 2021 Project Involve Fellow, Hoyle is a Sundance features programmer working on the festival’s Fiction, Nonfiction and Midnight teams. Hoyle started with Sundance in the event operations team, working up to the features curatorial team in April 2022....

Andrew Garfield could run for President. That fact is supported not just by the 38-year-old actor’s sky-high (practically celestial!) approval rating, but also by the British Oscar nominee’s actual place of birth: Los Angeles, California. “I do feel a sort of strange comfort here,” said the …tick, tick, boom! star onstage to TCM Host and moderator Dave Karger at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills....

Each month at Bring the Noise, classic films are reimagined with a new score performed live, one night only, by a rotating group of guest musicians—featuring a who’s-who of acclaimed musical artists. And this weekend, April 1, Bleachers’ Jack Antonoff will lend his unique brand forward thinking pop to John Hughes 1985 high school classic, The Breakfast Club. Don’t believe us? That would be a really weird thing for us to lie about....