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After all, you’re a filmmaker—and an independent filmmaker, no less. A few fleeting minutes of televisual exposure isn’t what necessarily motivates you or animates your career choices, and chances are you feel much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. But! Then again, being nominated for a major film honor at a nationally broadcast awards ceremony would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? And guess what: beginning today, Film Independent has opened submissions for the 2017 Spirit Awards....

Obviously, there’s more to animation than Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney. There’s also more to animation than computer-generated images. More, even, than ink and vellum. Sometimes there are puppets and clay. Recently, we had the honor of chatting with Arianne Sutner, producer of LAIKA Studios’ new critically acclaimed fantasy film, Kubo and the Two Strings. And like all of the animation studio’s three previous films, Kubo is a 3-D stop-motion animated feature—arguably the most tactile, evocative and labor-intensive form of animation there is, meticulously photographing articulated miniature characters and environments one single frame at a time....

Who is your favorite screenwriter and why? Pedro Almodóvar. His films are highly imaginative, beautifully crafted and completely insane. I would like to live in his mind one day and hopefully…not in his skin suit. –Marla Mindelle Charlie Kaufman, Diablo Cody, Noah Baumbach, Todd Solondz, Nicole Holofcener, Lisa Cholodenko. Sorry—can’t name just one! Each has their own distinct voice, and an ability to find humor through truth. –Jonathan Parks-Ramage Alan Ball....

If you ask producer Kim Magnusson how he’s managed to make more than 100 shorts over the course of his 19-year career—including one Oscar winner and another four that have earned Oscar nominations—he will tell you that working around the clock has a little something to do with it. “All of January I only slept three or four hours a night,” Magnusson says. “When I work in Denmark, I work locally from 9:00 a....

Sure, you could hire a skywriter to splash your entire screenplay on the skies above Los Angeles—but skywriters don’t come cheap. A far more sensible, earthbound strategy is to apply to Film Independent’s Fast Track program. Held each year during the LA Film Festival, Fast Track provides a three-day film financing market for selected director-producer teams to meet with 60 different top film executives, financiers, agents, distributors, granting organizations and production companies—it’s sort of like speed dating, but for indie movies....

WHITE GIRL When: September 2 Where You Can Watch: Theaters Director: Elizabeth Wood Starring: Morgan Saylor, Brian Marc, Chris Noth Why We’re Excited: It’s not your typical romance, but Elizabeth Wood’s first narrative feature reminds us how the best indie films always manage to break rules and shake up convention. Delivering a performance sure to be remembered throughout her career as “the performance” that catapulted her to the next level, Morgan Saylor stars as Leah, a wild college party girl enjoying her summer freedom by blowing lines, boozing it up and falling for bad boys....

Since the start of a new year puts most of us in a place of making resolutions, big life changes or moving in a new direction, we’ve dedicated January to movies about starting over. Since we love strong female characters, they also all happen to women in the lead role. Here are 10 Indie (and indie-adjacent) Films we love about making strides toward a better life. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) Director: Martin Scorsese Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd Why We Love It: This is the quintessential cinematic example of our theme this month....

If you were around the Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television’s campus in Playa Vista last weekend, you may have noticed people walking around outside the main building, looking through their devices pointed upward. What they were viewing was part of The Portal, Film Independent’s second-year immersive storytelling showcase. Though many of the VR experiences were solidly booked within minutes of the crowd’s release from the queue for each two-hour RSVP block, luckily the headset-bound experiences weren’t the only digital environments attendees were able to visit this year....

Beale Street balances themes of social injustice—race, poverty, false imprisonment—with a beautiful, moving love story. It presents its love as pure, embedded with a whisper of naivety between the film’s main characters, Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James). Tragedy interrupts the warmhearted narrative, leaving viewers to sit with a looming question throughout the duration of the film’s two hours: can Tish and Fonny’s love endure against an unfair, unforgiving and brutal justice system?...

FREDERICK THORNTON Film Independent Producing Lab and Project Involve Fellow Frederick Thornton prefaced our conversation about his media tendencies by explaining he has recently become obsessed with the particularities of music supervision. “You can learn so much about a character just by looking at the clothes they wear and the music they listen to,” he explained. Thornton (nominated for the 2014 Piaget Producers Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards) should know: prompted to divulge his habits, he drops Kanye, M83 and Childish Gambino references generously, whether it’s for power songs, meditative pauses or what he hopes will become the soundtrack to future generation’s Sunday-morning house cleaning rituals....

I sat down with producers John Lang, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath—the trio behind the company Divide/Conquer, best known for producing Lucky starring Harry Dean Stanton, which premiered at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival. DIVIDE/CONQUER is one of the most prolific production companies in the independent space, having produced over a dozen feature films and countless short-form content in the span of only five years. We discussed how producers are able to take bigger risks than directors, and how we need to be aware and adapt in order to take advantage of the changing landscape: Rebecca Green: I don’t think I know of a company that has a more fitting name than the three of you have with Divide/Conquer....

From the outside, 2018 was an excellent year for my career. I had projects premiere at prestigious festivals and took part in several competitive programs and fellowships. But in reality, these successes weren’t translating into any kind of sustainability. In fact, it was just the opposite. All the travel that is essential to our work, such as participating in industry fellowships and festivals, had severely disrupted my usual side hustle of commercial line producing while the related expenses were coming out-of-pocket....

Joining Sciamma on the global panel, remotely, from their respective home cities were five other international filmmakers: Spain’s Pedro Almodóvar (Parallel Mothers), Mexico’s Tatiana Huezo (Prayers for the Stolen), India’s P.S. Vinothraj (Pebbles), Italian-American filmmaker Jonas Carpignano (A Chiara) and Finland’s Juho Kuosmanen (Compartment No. 6)–all present to discuss their 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards-nominated films. All directors present helmed films that were nominated for Best International Film, except Carpignano’s A Chiara, nominated for three other awards: Best Feature, Best Editing and Best Cinematography....

Life Partners When: November 6 Where: iTunes/VOD Director: Susanna Fogel Starring: Leighton Meester, Gillian Jacobs Why We’re Excited: Susanna Fogel’s lighthearted feature film debut may seem like just another gal-pal/rom-com at first glance, but there’s a dynamic that makes it a bit more fresh and unique. The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, chronicles the relationship between Sasha and Paige, two best friends who are joined at the hip....

We asked 2021 Episodic Lab Fellow Razan Ghalayini to share her experience being part of the program, and where her pilot, Known Associates, is today. Razan is a two-time Emmy-nominated writer and producer, currently working on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. I am a Co-Executive Producer at the late-night comedy show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. In addition to my various managerial duties there, I write, produce and direct field pieces....

Keep reading for Day Seven and Eight Forum highlights, and follow along on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for more coverage of this year’s Forum. To catch up with our complete archive of Forum coverage on the blog, click here. Thanks for joining us online this year—we hope you had a much fun as we did! INDIE PRODUCERS GALORE Thursday featured two great panels of particular interest to creative producers around the world....

It may seem like forever since you’ve attended an in-person event, let alone a crowded one. Thankfully, those days are returning soon. And while we’ve all now got a pandemic to blame for rusty social skills, it’s worth noting that it was nearly a decade ago when Film Independent first approached me about developing a class on Producer’s Etiquette. They felt–and I agreed–that many in our community needed a regular refresher on basic manners....

We kid, of course. But once more, we’d like to congratulate this year’s winners and nominees. And we hope that all of you watching will help us in supporting all of these incredible artists by continuing to watch their work for years to come. But enough of the touchy-feely stuff! You came here to see who took home cold, tangible hardware. Here now is a complete list of winners at the 35th Film Independent Spirit Awards on February 8 in Santa Monica…...

The fun starts at 7:00 tonight with our Forum Opening Night film Loving, director Jeff Nichols’ historical drama about the real-life couple at the center of the landmark civil rights case Loving vs. Virginia. A Q&A with Nichols and the film’s leads Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton will follow the screening. Loving is sure to be a part of upcoming awards season conversations, and attendees to the Forum will get an early peek at the film in advance of it’s November 4 release....

We recently spoke to the film’s VFX Supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, who works for Double Negative, the large visual effects company based in London that Ex Machina director Alex and his production company, DNA Films, had approached to work on the film. “As always happens you have those initial meetings were you have to see if you get along and if you can collaborate together, and we both felt like we were singing off the same hymn sheet,” Whitehurst said, “so it seemed to look like it was going to work very well....