Film Independent is now accepting applications for their 2016 Documentary Lab. We asked one of last year’s lab participants, James Demo, to talk about how the lab helped him and his project, The Peacemaker. In 1971, Padraig O’Malley gambled his college scholarship on the Ali-Frazier fight, lost and dropped out of Harvard. He landed at The Plough and Stars, a pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he met a number of Irish ex-pats....
Long story short: the original, innocuous Pepe was originally created by San Francisco cartoonist Matt Furie for his comic Boys Club in 2005. Once digitized, the simple graphic image of Furie’s smiling stoner amphibian quickly lost its original context as it was widely shared across a variety of online communities, tweaked and appropriated toward a variety of purposes, before ultimately finding its most profound foothold as a symbol of the burgeoning “alt-right” movement in 2016—a movement ultimately culminating in the election of Donald Trump....
If you have a TV or the internet, you probably don’t need us to tell you about the ongoing crisis unfolding along US-Mexico border. As with many citizens of America and the world, you’ve likely been following the situation with some highly combustible mixture of outrage and disbelief. This intense collective reaction has taken many forms: protests, charitable giving, community organizing, Tweetstorms—you name it. Art, of course, is yet another way of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings in the face of an overwhelming global dilemma....
But what makes stories so powerful is also what can make them so insidious. As social media and the churn of the 24-hour news cycle keeps threatening to turn our cognitive landscape into one long, recursive echo chamber, it’s more critical than ever to create spaces that allow for diverse voices and different stories. Global Media Makers aims to create just such a space. The mentoring initiative is supported through a partnership between Film Independent and the U....
Twenty-five years ago, director Martin Scorsese, his screenwriter and producer took a film called Goodfellas to its first test screening in Encino. By the end of the opening scene when Joe Pesci stabs Billy Batts, the film had 39 walk-outs. “By the end of the screening, it was 71—probably a world’s record. That’s how bad it was,” said Goodfellas producer Irwin Winkler on stage alongside screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi at Film Independent at LACMA just before last night’s Live Read of the classic....
Big fish in small ponds are in for a rude awakening… or perhaps that’s just what I tell myself so I can sleep at night. This little brown girl with a big dream came of age in South Texas. I had the unfortunate pleasure of finding inordinate success, terribly young. At five, I entered an Easter coloring competition at CVS and won an oversized bunny. In elementary school, I bested summer reading challenges at the local library....
Norwegian filmmaker Anna Gutto’s Paradise Highway, in theaters and streaming July 29 from Lionsgate, marks a completely new challenge for the venerable French Oscar winner, placing her in the driver seat of an 18-wheel big rig as Sally, a truck driver forced to deliver illicit cargo—a teenage girl—at the request of a prison gang that has threatened the life of her incarcerated brother (Frank Grillo). Morgan Freeman costars as the FBI agent in hot pursuit, trying to save at least one of the estimated 100,00 children (per law enforcement statistics) that have been victims of sex trafficking in the U....
One way to look at the elements that make up a film’s sound is this simple, three-part breakdown: 1) dialogue and ambient location sound, 2) dialogue and ambient location sound, accompanied by music; or 3) dialogue and ambient location sound accompanied by a recognizable song, or “needle drop” as it’s sometimes called. We can break each of these categories down even further—but, generally speaking, these are three options we have to choose from as we decide how our film will sound from scene to scene....
But of course, “fun” is in the eye of the beholder. For some, fun means gaining valuable insight into the craft and business of filmmaking from top industry professionals. For others, fun is geeking out about our favorite regional art house theaters and music videos. Others enjoy reading panel recaps and interviews with emerging filmmakers. And of course, some people like all that stuff. And if you’re one of those, the blog at FilmIndependent....
If you’ve done everything in your ability to make your application as strong as possible, maybe it’s not about you or your project at all. Maybe it’s about them. Grant and funding entities are often subject to their own tight parameters that unfortunately limit them more than they’d like. So here are some things to consider next time someone says, “Thanks, but no thanks.” You’re one drop in the applicant pool....
One of the most exciting sections in the Los Angeles Film Festival this year is the U.S. Fiction Competition. It features nine World Premieres and one North American Premiere, some of them from first-time directors. Who are these rising talents in the indpendent film world? We got the inside scoop on their films, their journeys to the big screen, and a few juicy stories that happened along the way. What’s your first memory of sitting in a movie theater?...
ATHLETE A Guests of honor: Bonni Cohen (director), Jon Shenk (director); moderated by Lisa Hasko (Director of Artist Development, Film Independent) About: A search for truth in one of the greatest scandals in the history of U.S. sports. The film follows a team of reporters as they investigate claims of sexual abuse inside USA Gymnastics. Brave survivors step up to expose team physician Larry Nassar’s crimes and unite to fight back against a system of oppression and cruelty....
Every writer’s approach is different. There’s no right or wrong way to do it—just so long as it gets done. But there is one thing all writers do need: the steadfast support of their mentors and peers. Which is why we’re proud, once again, to announce the seven new visionary writers set to participate in Film Independent’s 2018 Screenwriting Lab—now celebrating it’s 20th year. As in previous years, the intensive four-week workshop will aim to help facilitate the unique creative voices of each writer through the development of a single feature-length screenplay: So—seven Fellows, seven passion projects....
The Intervention reunites DuVall with her But I’m a Cheerleader costar (and current Orange is the New Black cast member) Natasha Lyonne. The pair star as one of four couples who get together for a holiday retreat that—surprise!—has a hidden agenda. Over one long, uncomfortable weekend, the group gathers to confront one of the unsuspecting couples, whose rocky marriage has inevitably caused their friends to intervene to try and convince them that a divorce would really be the best thing for them both....
Morgan is a taut thriller with a simple yet terrifically engaging premise. It’s the directorial debut of Luke Scott, son of Ridley, and stars Kate Mara as a seriously corporate risk assessor named Lee tasked with visiting a remote genetic engineering laboratory. The facility is kibbutz-like but has recently been traumatized by the surprisingly violent outbursts of “Morgan” (played by Anya Taylor-Joy, youthful star of The Witch)—their miraculously successful A....
We’ve already dedicated an entire blog to discussing what makes bad trailers bad (spoiler alert: don’t give away the entire plot!)—but what makes good trailers good? Trailers and teasers are themselves a visual storytelling medium, and much of what makes for successful films likewise applies to trailers; namely, the ability to conjure a distinctive atmosphere and convey the tone of a film. Good movie trailers should ask questions and leave viewers intrigued....
Today, nonfiction films are an accepted, expected and celebrated part of any serious movie-watcher’s repertoire, as well as a key piece of the modern ecosystem of indie film distribution, populating multiplex marquees and Netflix queues all across the nation with riveting, real-life stories of tragedy, triumph, weirdness and wonder. But great nonfiction storytelling requires great nonfiction storytellers, which is why Film Independent is proud to announce this year’s 2016 Documentary Lab participants, whose work will no doubt be coming soon to a film festival, tablet or home television near you....
Enter Art House Convergence. Founded in 2008 out of partnerships forged at the Sundance Institute’s Art House Project, the organization has since expanded both nationally and internationally, providing networking opportunities and educational resources to art house theaters of all shapes and sizes, arming theater operators with the know-how and community support to make their businesses successful. But if AHC is the indie theater S.H.I.E.L.D., its “Nick Fury” is Managing Director Alison Kozberg—a lifelong film fan and veteran of arts organization mobilization and activation—whom we recently spoke to about Art House Convergence, its annual pre-Sundance conference in Utah, theater ops best-practices and more....
But the ever-growing intermountain metropolis can lay far greater claim to its role in the development of American independent cinema than just the setting of the idiosyncratic Eraserhead auteur’s humble origins. Since the 1960s, Missoula has, through a variety of venues, festivals and events, proved a reliable market for countercultural film exhibition—a tradition that continues today at The Roxy Theater, located in the heart of Missoula’s “hip strip.” We recently spoke to Roxy Executive Director Mike Steinberg about the theater, Missoula’s civic peculiarity and hunger for art house film, The Roxy’s circuitous porn-and-arson-plagued origins and more....
A WORD ABOUT EFFECTIVENESS If you’ve been alive in the world long enough to read this blog under your own power, chances are you know about Stephen R. Covey’s treatise on the daily practices and habits that highly effective people tend to share. One of those habits involves managing time so that truly important work gets the attention it deserves—rather than giving way to urgent/unimportant work or the inevitable non-urgent/unimportant work that creeps into our day....
