Posts

Documentary projects begin for all sorts of reasons. Some stories find the filmmaker, like when Edward Snowden contacted Laura Poitras and the result was Citizenfour. Others are sparked by an interesting person. For instance, 2018 Film Independent Spirit Award Truer Than Fiction award-winner Quest (directed by Johnathan Olshefski) began as a photo essay focusing on subject Christopher Rainey. In the beginning, filmmakers likely have many thoughts and ideas about what the story is going to look like....

Filmmakers often feel so attached to a song that it becomes a crucial and indispensable element of their story. A scene, or even an entire film, can revolve around a single piece of music. What many directors don’t realize is that the process of clearing that song can be very difficult and expensive. Brooke Wentz, the music supervisor behind Kings Point, Bully and Bill Cunningham New York cleared up some of the confusion and little-known realities of music licensing during a recent Film Independent education event....

Continuing from her Judy-themed pre-taped opening sketch, returning host and Spirit Award alum Aubrey Plaza (Best First Feature, Ingrid Goes West) delivered a no-holds-barred monologue via a Garland-inspired musical rendition of “Get Happy.” In a year when the Oscars have been skewered for snubbing female directors and other nominees of color, Plaza launched several jabs at the Academy—at one point wondering why there aren’t any sister directing duos à la Uncut Gems’ Safdie Brothers....

Now the women (BFFs in real life) have teamed up for Seimetz’s critically acclaimed new thriller, She Dies Tomorrow. Following the transmission of a seemingly highly contagious “mind virus” from victim-to-victim—starting with Sheil’s “Amy” and moving on to Adams’ “Jane” and beyond—the film’s themes of contagion, anxiety and lurking death are especially, even uncomfortably, relevant in our new post-coronavirus reality. Nevertheless, the film is surprisingly funny despite everything, excellently deploying the performers natural comedic chops....

Do What You Love takes viewers on an immersive journey inside LA’s underground electronic music scene, featuring interviews and performances from artists including Daedelus, Verbs, Major Gape, Repeated Measures and more—not to mention Mousey, aka GMM travel and hospitality coordinator Margaret McGlynn, who acted as the Turkish Vatansever (who directed) and Aslanoglu’s (the film’s producer) liaison to LA’s beats community. You can watch the entire film (no goggles or Google cardboard required—though it helps!...

Ever since talkies took Hollywood by storm in the early 1930s, sound has been an integral part of the movies. In fact, formally sophisticated (or at least budget-conscious) filmmakers often try telling stories using only sound, letting the camera linger on some innocuous detail of a scene while the sound design tells us all that we need to know about what’s happening. Extrapolate that idea even further and you have the world of narrative podcasts—stories told solely through the intricate and ingenious use of audio, utilizing a variety of techniques to create gripping narratives across a variety of genres....

But getting—and keeping!—these jobs still remains a challenge for underrepresented writers out of proportion to their white male counterparts. And minority writers must regularly balance issues of identity and authenticity while simultaneously struggling to avoid being pigeonholed. Such was the subject posed by September 22’s We The People panel “True Reflections of ‘Us’: The Writers Room,” which took place at the 2018 LA Film Festival. Moderated by Rebecca Sun, Senior Reporter for The Hollywood Reporter, panelists included Our Lady J (writer and producer, FX’s Pose), LaToya Morgan (writer and supervising producer, AMC’s Into the Badlands), Gloria Calderón Kellett (co-creator and executive producer, Netflix’s One Day at a Time) and Natasha Rothwell (writer and executive story editor, HBO’s Insecure)....

What’s more, we here at Film Independent want to make this the best awards season ever by giving you an inside look behind the curtain at what the TV-watching public doesn’t usually get to see. From building sets to backstage shenanigans and everything in between, we’re giving you exclusive access to the Spirit Awards thanks to the wonders of social media. Here’s your guide for who to follow all day Saturday, February 27....

The documentary, directed by Susan Bonds and Alex Lieu, chronicles the making of Zedd’s latest album True Colors, as well as the series of elaborate listening parties that the artist and his team put on for a small group of loyal fans ahead of the album’s release. Taking place in a series of exotic locations—from the Grand Canyon to the Empire State Building to Alcatraz Island—each event allowed fifty lucky fans to hear one of the album’s tracks for the very first time in a meticulously designed setting, and to have a meet-and-greet with Zedd afterward....

We’re re-posting it here for two reasons: to celebrate Season Two of Lemus’s Gente-fied—which premiered this week on Netflix—and to tout the fact that Marvin will be guest-directing our Live Read of the 1991 Steve Martin classic L.A. Story this Saturday at the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. To attend, get tickets now. As a filmmaker who’s constantly making things, how much time do you have to actually consume the latest TV shows, films, music and podcasts?...

“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, Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty take us through the making of Llyn Foulkes One Man Band. Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty FILM: Llyn Foulkes One Man Band / Documentary Competition “Make and destroy and make again” is how Llyn Foulkes’ describes his artistic process....

So, with the host of the 2024 Spirit Awards confirmed and ready to be announced this Thursday, November 30 (it’s a really good one, stay tuned!) we thought it might be appropriate today to look back at some of our favorite gut-busting Spirit Awards comedy bits of yesteryear, from the occult blood sacrifice of Tiger Beat cutie-pies, to lesbian “glove lunch” cruising sessions, to a Canadian heavy metal invasion, old school Hollywood royalty and more....

One of Transparent’s most arresting elements is its hypnotic, melancholic, nostalgia-drenched opening title sequence—an impressionistic collage of archival footage and images that gesture, without ever being too literal, at the show’s core themes and threads of family, sex, gender and Jewish identity. In fact, Transparent’s title sequence was created by none other than filmmaker Rhys Ernst—an alumnus of Film Independent’s Project Involve Class of 2012. In addition to serving as a Transparent co-producer, Ernst (who is transgender) is a celebrated visual artist whose work has appeared at the Whitney Biennial and also worked as a consultant on the 2015 Academy Award winning feature The Danish Girl, advising the film’s producers on trans community outreach....

How well you tell that story depends on the images you pick to populate that rectangle and the sounds you select to accompany them. It may sound elementary, but ask any moviemaker who cares about their art if they think it’s easy. Spoilers: it’s not. There’s something else you’ll learn from talking to filmmakers who’ve “made it”—that there’s no one single way to learn the craft or to break into the industry....

This week, a group of Syrian rebels–who call themselves “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”–risk their lives to document the atrocities committed by ISIS in their homeland. THE FILM Type: Documentary Feature Director, Producer: Matthew Heineman Co-Producers: Juan Camilo Cruz, Matthew Hamachek, Joedan Okun, Maya Seidler Executive Producers: Alex Gibney, Molly Thompson, Maiken Baird, David Fialkow, Elaine Frontain Bryant, Stacey Offman, Robert Sharenow Budget: Between $1-1.5 million Financing: Grants, TV licensing, Private Equity Production: November 2015–December 2016 Shooting Format: Canon EOS C300 Mark II Screening Format: DCP World Premiere: Sundance 2017 Distributor: IFC Films (US) Awards: click here DEVELOPMENT, FINANCING, PRODUCTION Directed, produced and filmed by Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman, City of Ghosts is a singularly powerful cinematic experience that is sure to shake audiences to their core as it elevates the canon of one of the most talented documentary filmmakers working today....

A few days later, when the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA released its Diversity Report, it proved just how desperate and urgent Simien’s plea really is. In the exhaustive report—which examined the top theatrical film releases in 2012 and 2013 and all broadcast, cable and digital platform TV programs from the 2012-13 season—the news for artists and executives of color went from bad to worse then horrific....

The panelists shared a wealth of knowledge and critical pieces of advice that will be valuable for any first-time filmmaker looking to turn their idea into a completed project. After the conversation it was clear that there is no single path to success, but there are plenty of tools and strategies that can be utilized in the process. Drawing on personal experience can also be the most effective way to introduce yourself to the world....

But long before Barry Jenkins’ moody self-actualization triptych claimed this year’s Robert Altman prize (already awarded) we were already obsessed with the film’s unique approach to casting. And film fans got the chance to dig even deeper on February 1 during the first night of Film Independent’s 2017 Directors Close-Up series. The panel, called “Moonlight: A Stellar Ensemble Piece” and held at West LA’s Landmark Theaters, featured Jenkins, Moonlight casting director Yesi Ramirez and star Naomie Harris in a panel moderated by Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce....

On the surface, the scripts for Creed, Inside Out, The End of the Tour, Spotlight and Chi-Raq seem to have little in common. But despite the breadth of subject matter, each of these films—and their screenplays—demonstrates a firm and thoughtful commitment to exploring the emotional life of the characters being put on screen. Writing and creative collaboration was the subject of Film Independent’s February 10 Directors Close-Up panel Storytellers—Writers and Directors, which brought the scribes behind some of the biggest independent releases of the year (or, in Inside Out’s case, one of the biggest films of the year in general) to the Landmark stage to discuss the art of writing and the process of collaborating with each film’s director....

But in another, far more accurate sense of the word, documentaries are what nonfiction storytelling is. And at Film Independent, just as with narrative projects we aim to champion documentary features, shorts and docuseries that embody Fi’s signature gumbo of diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision. Just ask Questlove, winner of the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary: Or HBO’s Black and Missing, winner of Best new Non-Fiction or Documentary Series:...