NUDITY CLAUSES Okay we’re all adults here… right? We all understand that in the movie business, sex sells. But before audiences flock to the theaters or are titillated into a Twitter tidal wave by a trailer, even before the cameras roll on set, filmmakers and actors (with their agents close by, no doubt) need to come to an agreement about what exactly is happening in that nude scene on page 62 in the script....
“I have a friend who’s a costume designer, and she has a theory that if we were to all look back on what we did with our Barbie dolls, we would see our futures in that,” said Marta Kauffman, co-creator and showrunner of the iconic sitcom Friends, at Saturday’s “Women Who Call the Shots” panel at the Los Angeles Film Festival. “I don’t know if it’s true for everybody,” she continued, “but I do know that when I was a little girl and my parents were doing whatever they were doing or my sister was busy not talking to me, I would put on shows for God....
Forging Your Path: Film Independent Fellows in the Spotlight For the October 26 livestreamed discussion, ‘Forging Your Path: Film Independent Fellows in the Spotlight’ event, we were treated to an abundance of talented Film Independent Alums who have returned for a scintillating and frank conversation about the joys and vicissitudes of trying to eke out a career in filmmaking. The discussion was moderated by our very own Dea Vazquez, Associate Director of Fiction Programs within Film Independent’s Artist Development umbrella, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next year!...
But knowledgeable filmmakers are made, not born. And unfortunately, credible insight into the craft and business of moviemaking isn’t always so easy to come by even now, in the age of TED Talks and message boards. Luckily, there’s the Film Independent Forum, which for 12 consecutive years has been LA’s pre-eminent conference for independent storytellers and content creators—featuring exclusive in-depth panels, case studies, networking events and keynote addresses from some of the top originative voices in the modern film world....
Film geeks get a special treat this October when Film Independent at LACMA and Loyola Marymount University (LMU) School of Film and Television present 21 films from West Africa—most of which have never been seen here in the U.S. Caméras d’Afrique: The Films of West Africa, curated by Film Independent at LACMA curator Elvis Mitchell, kicks off October 3, at LACMA with the U.S. premiere of Grigris—Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s critically acclaimed film that showed at this year’s Cannes—in a double feature with Harouns’s Bye Bye Africa....
Click here for complete eligibility details and to apply. Here, we check in with last quarter’s winner producer Josh Penn whose film Ad Inexplorata explores the psychological drama inherent in an astronaut’s one-way mission to Mars. Tell us about Ad Inexplorata. What is the film about and why is it important to you to tell this story? Ad Inexplorata is about a one-man, one-way mission to Mars and the many challenges–technical, physical, emotional–that face man traveling in space....
Wondering what the Fi Doc Lab could do for you and your project? Well, check out the below from Meredith Chin, producer of the 2019 Doc Lab Project Duty Free, now available for rental on all major SVOD platforms. You never know what a friendship or connection will yield. I met Sian-Pierre back in 2014 when he was running his own business—an online culture magazine called Swagger NYC—and working as a pop-culture and social justice correspondent for CNN....
There’s little known of the pathway for an independent producer. So much of the journey requires taking a leap of faith. In 2019, I began networking with writers and directors in hopes of discovering my first narrative feature. One afternoon, while cruising LinkedIn of all places, I came across a profile for a director I saw potential in. As fate would have it, that person was Joseph Marconi, the writer and director of the feature I will usher through as my first independent project, Wild Animal....
But that’s not all. Smack in the middle of all this celebrity-strewn Beverly Hills hubbub will be your chance to catch the premiere of the 2021 Project Involve shorts program at the Directors Guild Theater, on Thursday, November 11. Over the years, PI shorts have gone one to win major festival awards and launch the careers of filmmakers including Lulu Wang, Andrew Ahn, Effie T. Brown and countless others. If you want a peek at the future of Hollywood, it’s right here....
Since the first Film Independent Forum in 2005, each year from the end of summer to mid fall, we talk to filmmakers who have released their films in the last year or so. Each year we select up to 20 of the films to highlight that have gone through the festival circuit and into distribution outlets. From these candid interviews we have published more than 100 case studies over the last eight years....
You can watch the panel—Sustaining a Creative Career: A Filmmaker’s Balancing Act—in its entirety below or on our YouTube channel. The filmmakers—Cherien Dabis, Tina Mabry, Sian Heder and Nisha Ganatra—each acknowledged the difficulties of working in the industry and in many ways, their stories were similar. Each had a sudden realization that storytelling was something they could do as a career. Each went to film school and then wrote and shot features, all of which found success at film festivals....
It was a big day, so who can blame us for still continuing to nurse our hangover—both literal and figurative—well into this foggy Thursday morning? After all, what use is the #TBT hashtag if not to remember the extremely recent past. There are plenty of Spirit Awards highlights on our YouTube channel, but unless you were actually in the tent with us in Santa Monica, you may have missed our brand-new Film Independent trailer, which kicked the show off in style…...
Like all of the programs housed under our greater umbrella of Film Independent Artist Development offerings, Project Involve is designed to help talented emerging filmmakers wedge a foot squarely between the wall and whatever doors are trying to be shut under the heavy hands of an exclusionary Hollywood. But rarely has the journey from PI to industry success—a journey enjoyed by alumni including Lulu Wang, Effie T. Brown, Marvin Lemus and others—been less circuitous than that of Emergency filmmakers KD Dávila and Carey Williams....
On June 11, 2020 Film Independent was thrilled to host a very special Coffee Talk chat between New Queer Cinema icons (and pals!) Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Milk) and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus), who got together over video chat for a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation. “It’s funny you were mentioning us being part of the New Queer Cinema,” laughed Mitchell, “We’re definitely the Old Queer Cinema....
Beginning with a Black List-approved original screenplay by Doug Simon, Bristol was encouraged by producers to put his own stamp on the material, resulting in the change of setting from post-apocalyptic upstate New York to post-apocalyptic Flatbush. Bristol’s updated vision also attracted the film’s stellar cast, which includes Jennifer Hudson, Milla Jovovich, Qvenzhané Wallis, Sam Worthington, Common and more. We spoke to Bristol on the eve of Breathes early May release to delve deep into how he personalized this fraught tale of futuristic cat-and-mouse, as well as genre filmmaking and how winning a Spirit Award provided him with a “seat at the table....
If you live in Los Angeles, chances are you’ll admit that a West Coast summer is one of the best summers you can possibly have. But that said there’s no denying that our East Coast cousins have used the coastal Atlantic region as the setting for some extremely memorable summer-themed movies. So as July 4th approaches with the promise of outdoor barbecues and skies lit up by nighttime fireworks, this month’s Old v....
Way back when Elissa Federoff first agreed to deliver the annual industry keynote at the 2020 Film Independent Forum, the NEON Distribution President made sure to warn our Film Independent Education team that, “should things develop with coronavirus I might not be able to attend”—the date of that cautionary email? March 2. Cut to: nearly five months later. With the world more or less adjusted to its much-discussed “new normal,” Federoff was finally, on July 31, given the opportunity to make good on her commitment, albeit from the confines of a CD-insert-sized Zoom window at home in New York rather than onstage behind a real-world #FiForum20 dais in sunny Playa Vista, CA....
Born in Belgium in 1928, Varda relocated to Paris after WWII—first reinventing herself as a successful photographer before transitioning to film. With an eye for gritty social realism that nevertheless remained playful in its touch and iconic in its image-making, Varda’s first feature was 1954’s neo-realist La Pointe Courte, which paved a stylistic path forward for La Nouvelle Vague auteurs like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Eventually, Varda would come to be considered the “Grandmother of the French New Wave....
Obviously it wasn’t always like this. For 50 or so years of its existence, cinema hewed to a standard 35mm 4:3 “Academy” picture image—not perfectly square, but close enough to pass for one in a police lineup. Hardly anyone uses 4:3 for features anymore, preferring widescreen’s ability to accommodate epic vistas and intricate horizontal compositions. But maybe it’s a mistake to ignore 4:3. Maybe it’s time for filmmakers to start thinking inside the box....
Last night, the fourth season of the Film Independent at LACMA Series kicked off with a screening of The Skeleton Twins, followed by a lively Q&A with co-writer/director Craig Johnson and stars Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Series curator Elvis Mitchell introduced the film, a darkly comic drama which premiered at Sundance this January, as being not your typical “Sundance movie,” and claimed that Hader and Wiig walk the line—which he described as “not actually a line, but a chasm”—between sketch comedy and dramatic acting incredibly well....
