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Stepping into an ongoing series as a guest director can present its own set of challenges. Enter Film Independent’s inaugural Episodic Directing Intensive—the latest addition to Film Independent Artist Development’s suite of programs. Held online February 15-17, the three-day program welcomed veteran directors, showrunners and executives to share their episodic directing knowledge with the six chosen participants—all alumni of Fi’s Artist Development programs including Project Involve, Producing Lab and Documentary Lab....

At the helm of Project Involve are Senior Manager, Project Involve Francisco Velasquez and Artist Development Associate Angel Kristi Williams, who welcomed the audience to a night of authentic storytelling by a passionate and diverse group of filmmakers. The Fellows created a total of six films with the help of industry mentors, master workshops and top-notch production resources from Film Independent sponsors. Learn more about Project Involve here. Sitting in the theater watching these six films felt like a breath of fresh air....

One such venue is the 90-seat Trylon Cinema, located in Minneapolis’s Longfellow neighborhood. Focused on showcasing a diverse slate of reparatory titles, the Trylon is a project borne out of passion, community and low-interest credit cards—those theater seats aren’t cheap! Since opening its doors at its new permanent home in 2009, the Trylon has offers the unique opportunity to experience classic film on the big screen in an intimate setting....

When Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher’s Tracktown premiered at the 2016 LA Film Festival, little did they know the film would result in an unprecedented invitation to make their next project on the (very cold) ground, smack in the middle of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea—part of the International Olympic Committee’s new artist in residency program launched in 2016. The result is Olympic Dreams, a series of five episodic shorts that mine the Greek-American Pappas’s own IRL experience as an Olympic long-distance runner (for the Greek team) at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio....

Contrary to any negative theories you might have heard, Sundance programmers really do want to see your film. And to find out how it works for real, Film Independent lured two of the festival’s top programmers to our Wilshire Boulevard HQ (just down the street from Sundance’s Wilshire Boulevard HQ, in fact) for an extended Q&A with Fi Film Education Associate director Paul Cowling. The big question? What’s the secret to getting into Sundance?...

Aloft is a lyrical film and a poignant one. It’s the story of a woman who discovers that she is a healer, yet she can’t heal the one thing that matters to her–her terminally ill son, so she becomes a maternal figure to the rest of the world instead. In Elvis Mitchell’s conversation with Connelly at Film Independent’s free Member screening of the film last night, he looked back at the stand-out roles of her career and asked whether it was a deliberate choice that she made to play these strong, unapologetic mothers....

With 2015 right around the corner, so is the 30th anniversary of the Film Independent Spirit Awards. (February 21: mark your calendars!) Now that this year’s nominees have been announced, we’ve decided to celebrate the past 30 years of cinematic greatness by showcasing winners from decades past, including where each can be watched, so you can discover—or rediscover—indie classics. Because we love movies so much, we’re kicking off the six-part series with five of our favorite Spirit Award winning films that explore sex, love and romance....

Documentarian Jeff Broadway defies the age-old stereotype of the starving artist. With three films under his belt, Broadway offers proof that you don’t have to have a trust fund to create documentaries without going hungry. His first, Cure for Pain, followed the trials and tribulations of Morphine front man Mark Sandman; Godspeed Taiwan explored the lasting impact of Chinese oppression; and his latest project, Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton (an Official Selection of the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival), which documented the formation of independent label Stones Throw Records, marked Broadway’s return to his musical roots....

Dreams Are Colder Than Death is a documentary made by Jafa–a celebrated cultural critic, visual artist and filmmaker–and funded by ZDF, the German television channel, to commemorate the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. In his response, Jafa was clear: as a scholar and filmmaker, he has been engaged long-term in trying to figure out “how to powerfully render us black folks.” “The camera functions as surrogate for the white gaze and we put on these survivor modalities,” he continued....

We’re continuing to upload new content—including full panels, highlights and exclusive interviews—to our YouTube channel throughout next week (perfect for the occasional break in-between binging new episodes of Stranger Things.) The Film Independent Forum, of course, is our annual three-day conference devoted to providing you with the tools, resources and industry know-how required to make your next project a reality. This year was particularly exciting, featuring keynote conversations from two of this year’s most prominent indie film voices—Get Out’s Jordan Peele and Mudbound’s Dee Rees—as well as an expanded curriculum of panels and talks touching on wide-ranging topics: from VR, to creative financing, to the ins and outs of web series, documentary and episodic TV....

BURN is a feature documentary about Detroit, told through the eyes of Detroit firefighters, who are charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead. Directed and produced by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez, the film premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. Through Film Independent, BURN is also participating in the Sundance Institute’s Artist Services, a program that provides Institute artists with exclusive opportunities for creative self-distribution, marketing and financing solutions for their work....

Writer/Director: Dave Boyle Producers: Duane Andersen, Dominic Fratto, Dave Boyle Budget: Under $850K Financing: Private Equity Production: 30 days/Salt Lake City/Summer 2007 Shooting Format: Super 16mm Screening Format: 35mm World Premiere: San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival Awards: Los Angeles Asian-Pacific Film Festival – Special Jury Award, San Diego Asian Film Festival – Audience Award; etc Development and Financing Filmmaker Dave Boyle’s first film Big Dreams Little Tokyo was a wry comedy based on his experiences living as a fish out of water among the Japanese community in Australia....

In a conversation moderated by Vanessa Bayer—a fellow SNL alum and creator/star of Showtime’s excellent comedy I Love That for You, in which Shannon co-stars—the sometime Sally O’Malley and Mary Katherine Gallagher regaled the sold-out crowd with stories from her best-selling memoir 2022 memoir, Hello, Molly! Shannon hustled hard and ran into plenty of disappointment in her early days as an actor. Growing up in Cleveland, Shannon performed with Heights Youth Theater starting in fifth or sixth grade....

An Executive Producer at SMUGGLER, Sue Yeon Ahn has spent her career in the commercial and music video space working with heavy-hitting brands like Nike and Apple and bands such Arcade Fire and Jay Z. Here, Sue speaks with Dear Producer about the unique challenges to short-form storytelling, the struggle of keeping up with the ever-changing media landscape, and the different pathways into commercial filmmaking–if you’re looking to make the leap....

Joining DuVernay were key members of her creative team: editor Spencer Averick, composer Ramin Djawadi, prop master J.P. Jones, lead hair stylist Kimberly Kimble, VFX supervisor Richard McBride, director of photography Tobias Schliessler, location manager Alison Taylor and casting director Aisha Coley. Award-winning screenwriter Robin Swicord moderated the panel. DuVernay spoke to the process of working with each collaborator, emphasizing the importance of every department on a big-budget project like Wrinkle as well as the challenges of translating a classic work of literature into film....

The debate apparently hasn’t affected his fundraising efforts as he has raised over a half of a million dollars for The Newest, Hottest Spike Lee Joint with 19 days left in his campaign. Even Steven Soderbergh kicked in ten grand, which he justified in a post called Why I back Spike Lee. In it, he praises Lee (along with Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch) who, in the 80s, “…attracted my attention and expanded my idea of what was possible…These were distinctive new voices, and the freedom (and success) they represented was liberating and energizing; these were shoulders I would try to stand on, that I would be proud to stand on....

It’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by since the very first screening at the first-ever Los Angeles Film Festival. Time flies by when you’re having fun and watching great movies! In celebration of our 20th anniversary, we asked some of the key players at the Festival to share one of their most memorable LA Film Fest moments. “They seemed to raise the whole night sky.” One of my most joyous memories is the night we screened the documentary Thunder Soul at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre during the 2010 festival....

But just as the Cheesecake Factory has a cheery waiter named “Chet” to walk you through the day’s seafood specials, so too are we here to help; devoting a special blog series throughout this penultimate Festival week giving you some choice film recommendations. Let’s talk music. Music—whether the act of performing, creating or selling it—is of course a prime backdrop for drama, especially for documentaries. So! Here now are six documentaries playing at the 2018 LA Film Festival (September 20-28) featuring true-life tales of struggling songbirds and triumphant troubadours that will have you calling “Encore!...

This is why audiences sitting in a suburban movie theater outside of Seattle can be moved by the story of an Iranian couple’s divorce in Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation. Or why audiences in London can thrill to the kung-fu action of Ip Man. Or why moviegoers in Rio emerge from theatres of the The Force Awakens making action sound effects tinged with Portuguese accents. Having long recognized the importance of fostering a cross-cultural dialogue rooted in filmmaking, Film Independent is thrilled to announce the launch of Global Media Makers—an innovative new international film exchange program presented in partnership with the U....

Who are you? What do you do? And really, what’s your whole deal, anyways? We know that’s some intense energy to hit you with at the start of the workweek, but trust us: if you don’t have your own answers to these primordial questions of identity you better believe someone else will be more than happy to supply them on your behalf. And when we’re talking about characters operating inside an onscreen narrative, the question of who gets to shape whose story is critical for storytellers to consider—and only exponentially so when it comes to real-life people as portrayed in a documentary or nonfiction film project....