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Luckily for you nominees, there’s tomorrow’s annual Spirit Award Nominee Brunch and Grant Awards ceremony at the BOA Steakhouse in West Hollywood. And while the yearly event provides a great opportunity to chow down and rub shoulders with industry peers, its larger purpose is to award $125,000 worth of unrestricted cash grants to some of 2019’s most deserving filmmakers. And this year, these grants will be presented by two amazing gents whose combined body of work practically defines the term “independent spirit”—Jon M....

“One of the things you’re in charge of is continuity,” she explained. Winney describes this process as overseeing each take and camera angle to be able to cut footage in a way that appears to reflect one moment in time. The script supervisor focuses on costume– examining details of a lapel, for example, or ensuring an actor is wearing a wedding ring, or tucking hair behind an actress’ ear. She scopes the scene; “Is the purse on the correct shoulder of an actor [in every shot]?...

In addition to announcing the Festival’s Opening Night film, Ricardo de Montreuil’s Lowriders, we told you to our new home at the ArcLight Cinemas in Culver City and Hollywood, and announced two of this year’s Festival honorees: Guest Director Ryan Coogler and our 2016 Spirit of Independence Award winner Ava DuVernay, who will share the award with her distribution company, Array Releasing. In fact, this year’s LA Film Festival is already poised to be one of the most innovative and exciting cinema celebrations of 2016, with progressive programming picks and a warm, inclusive Festival community designed to wow audiences and launch the next generation of new filmmaking talent....

But let’s say you’re an indie filmmaker with limited resources and you’re dying to use “Hotline Bling” over that super cool 2nd Act montage, but you don’t know how to begin the process of securing its use. What do you do? This was the subject of Film Independent’s Legal Ease workshop, held Tuesday, January 12 at the Film Independent offices in Los Angeles with guest speaker Mitchell Manger of the law firm Greenberg Glusker....

That’s right: this year’s 20th anniversary edition of Film Independent’s signature panel series kicks off today at 12pm with the “Spirit of Independence” Directors Roundtable—typically one of the most raucous and fascinating sessions of the entire program (for proof, see our wild 2020 and 2019 sessions.) Of course, as previously touted all panels at this year’s online DCU will be made up entirely of 2021 Film Independent Spirit Award nominees....

The panel kicked off with a discussion of the challenges nonfiction filmmakers face when trying to keep their professional and personal life separate. “Your [documentary] subjects become part of your family,” said panelist Kirby Dick (The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground). “In some ways, you’re living your life as you’re making your documentary because you get so close to your subjects.” Dick’s latest project, The Hunting Ground, shines the spotlight on the immensely prevalent sexual assault culture on college campuses across the nation....

This past Monday, ten filmmakers officially joined the ranks of independent artists making and screening movies in the city of Los Angeles. They made their debut at Film Independent at LACMA, where their work premiered for a raucous crowd of fans, film lovers, peers, family and friends. The first annual public screening of Ghetto Film School Los Angeles featured ten shorts—sans dialogue, as the assignment dictated—by diverse teenagers from neighborhoods throughout the city....

Here’s how it works: Print out the bingo card below, and as you head to the theater over the next few months (or stay at home on your couch), fill in the spaces with the movies you see. When you get five in row (vertical, horizontal and diagonal bingos all count), snap a picture and tweet us your bingo using #FilmBingo. We’ll retweet all completed bingos and draw three winners who will receive brand new Film Independent merchandise at the start of the new year....

THE NEXT PICTURE SHOW When the Pitchfork-produced film blog The Dissolve ceased operations in 2015, I—like many film fans—was incredibly disheartened. In just a few short years, the site had established itself as dependable source of entertaining, edifying and personality-filled film commentary. Since then, the site’s core editorial foursome—Keith Phipps, Genevieve Koski, Tasha Robinson and Scott Tobias—have scattered across the internet to various high-profile writing gigs and media projects. Happily, though not always easily, the team still finds time to continue their collaboration with The Next Picture Show, a double-dose of crack film analysis that every other week compares a newer film to an older title that, in some way, shares some of the newer film’s DNA....

By Lee Jameson / Film Education Coordinator Could “blockbuster mania” cause Hollywood to implode? Steven Spielberg thinks so. “You’re at the point right now,” Spielberg recently said, “where a studio would rather invest $250 million in one film for a real shot at the brass ring than make a whole bunch of really interesting, deeply personal—and even maybe historical—projects that may get lost in the shuffle.” Of course none of this is news to indie filmmakers....

All this made Har’el the ideal candidate to be featured as the Centerpiece Keynote at The New Wave, Film Independent’s new showcase celebrating cultural change makers. Produced by Film Independent in partnership with KCRW and official host The Museum of Contemporary Art, Har’el’s talk was capped off by a screening of her debut narrative feature Honey Boy, following years of acclaimed documentaries, music videos and commercials. The event happened October 19 at at MOCA Grand Avenue....

When you come, you’re part of an epic, ongoing meta-story about creativity and cultural evolution. Your role in this story is to luxuriate in the glow of fresh voices and shape how those voices will thrive and survive, based solely on your reaction. Your role is to be in on the ground floor of what all of our filmmakers hope will be the start of a long and exciting career....

We’re especially excited about this year’s ceremony as we’re adding a Best Editing category for the first time ever. “The critical importance of editing in the filmmaking process cannot be overstated, something we look forward to celebrating at the Spirit Awards,” said Film Independent President Josh Welsh. The Spirit Awards also honor the year’s best work in these categories: Best Feature, Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, Best Director, Best Screenplay, John Cassavetes Award (for the best feature made for less than $500,000), Best Male Lead, Best Female Lead, Best Supporting Male, Best Supporting Female, Best Cinematography, Best International Film and Best Documentary....

When I set out to pursue television shadowing, I got mixed feedback. Some told me that it might not be a good use of my time. I was told that many people end up doing it for years without getting anywhere. I don’t know yet if shadowing will get me hired, but it certainly inspired me. Transparent, tackling family and transgender identity with humor and authenticity, embodies everything that is enticing to me about television right now....

Goyer told the audience, most of whom were writers, that the sequence in Batman Begins where Bruce Wayne travels to Bhutan was inspired by his own experience traveling in his 20s. More recently, when he wrote the screenplay for Man of Steel, he admitted, “I already had a hard time identifying with Superman”—until he became both a father for the first time and a stepfather over the course of the year he spent writing the screenplay....

THE GREASY STRANGLER When: October 7 Where You Can Watch: Theaters/VOD Director: Jim Hosking Starring: Michael St. Michaels, Sky Elobar, Elizabeth De Razzo Why We’re Excited: Halloween season is upon us, which means people are finally in the mood for a good scare. Technically we only have one official horror movie on the list this month, but Jim Hosking’s feature debut The Greasy Strangler definitely earns its place among October’s line-up of creepshows....

Of course, one such venue that this metaphorical mushroom-cloud has delivered these stories unto is the LA Film Festival—which today unveils its 2017 competition lineup, featuring 37 world-premiere titles, two international premieres and nine North American premieres chosen for the Festival’s US Fiction, Documentary, World Fiction, LA Muse and Nightfall sections. All this, plus 51 short films, 15 Future Filmmaker High School shorts and nine web series episodes. So pack the Visine—because that’s a lot of watching....

But what if you’ve already been to Disneyworld and the Learning Tower of Pisa? What if you’ve managed to scratch Dollywood and Branson, MO off your running Excel sheet of prime wanderlust locales? What, in other words, do you do when you’re simply out of ideas? Luckily there’s one handy resource guaranteed to be full of great travel ideas: your DVD shelf. From awe-inspiring scenic vistas to electric urban hustle-and-bustle, movies have the ability—though their inherent aspirational glamor—to make practically any destination seem desirable and exotic....

Longtime celluloid holdouts, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen’s first foray into digital cinematography was with last year’s Oscar-nominated Western anthology dramedy The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Birthed from a collection of short stories the pair had written over a period of 20-25 years (including one Jack London adaptation), the six-chapter Netflix original is set in a heightened version of the American frontier, and is the third collaboration for the brothers with Director of Photography Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie, A Very Long Engagement), following 2014’s Inside Llewyn Davis and the Coens segment of the 2006 anthology film Paris, je t’aime....

At a recent press screening for his new historical car racing drama Ford v. Ferrari on the Fox Studio lot in Century City, director James Mangold (Logan, Walk The Line) told the audience he was impressed that the studio had green-lit such a large-scale feature not tied to any sort of pre-existing IP. And Fox’s commitment to original storytelling paid off, with Manglod’s hit retelling—$91 million domestic box office and counting—of one of the most contentious tug-of-war sagas in auto racing history....