Returning following a one-year hiatus precipitated by the WGA strike is the Gotham Week Project Market, which runs today through October 4 at the Brooklyn Navy Yards. (The final Expo day on branded content will take place at Soho Works.) 

Produced by The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker’s publisher, the Gotham Week Project Market is the latest iteration of the non-profit’s annual event, which began as the Independent Feature Film Market in 1979, when the organization was known as IFP (the Independent Feature Project). Originally a showcase presenting finished films to buyers, the event has morphed several times over the years and now contains multiple strands as well as an accompanying Expo featuring talks and panels organized by The Gotham and partner organizations from its Expanded Communities initiative.

Brand new this year is the Gotham Week Honors, which, says Executive Director of the The Gotham Jeff Sharp, “harkens back to past IFP Weeks, where there were awards and recognition given out to films and filmmakers.” (The first edition of the Gotham Awards, even, took place during IFP Week.) “We have an opportunity to shine a light on a handful of excellent, incredible new filmmakers and their work, and to connect them with alumni and other folk who have been through Gotham Week,” he says. Two filmmakers — RaMell Ross, whose Nickel Boys was the opening night of the New York Film Festival; and Sean Wang, whose Didi has been been a specialty hit this summer — will receive Alumni of Distinction Awards. Gina Duncan, currently the President of BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and formerly with the Jacob Burns Center and Sundance, will receive the inaugural Gotham Week Cultural Impact honor.

“Maybe [these awards] will harken back to early Gotham Awards energy,” says Sharp,” with “the community really feeling tangible evident that their voices do carry forward.”

The gap year, industry trends and the evolving needs of filmmakers shaped this year’s edition, says Kia Brooks, Deputy Director, who cites meetings she and the Gotham team had at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. “That gave us an understanding of what filmmakers want from the Project Market,” she says. “The most important conversations we had were around the narrative side — US features — and how to approach that.”

“In the past, we had US features as a section and then US features in post,” she continues. “A lot of the filmmakers we spoke to said, ‘I have a feature-length script, and I haven’t been able to shoot my feature yet, but what I have been able to do is shoot a short.’ And so that was the impetus for us to think about this new US Shorts to Feature section, which kind of acts as a stand-in for the [previous] US features in post section.”

Evolving short films into features is time-honored independent tradition, with films such as Half Nelson, Raising Victor Vargas, Whiplash and Shiva Baby all having made that development journey. Still, it’s not the most common path, so it’s perhaps surprising that, says Brooks, The Gotham “wound up getting double the number of submissions we typically do” for this new shorts-to-features section. To apply, filmmakers submitted both the short as well as the corresponding feature script. Among the projects selected for this inaugural year are Huella, an elevated horror story about a flamenco dancer escaping a family curse by Filmmaker 25 New Face Gabriela Ortega, and Alexandra Quin’s Thirstygirl, an intense drama about sibling ties threatened by the specter of addiction based on the short by the same name that played Sundance this year.

Also new this year is a Branded Storytellers to Watch section, in which ten selected filmmakers, curated through recommendations of partner organizations in the Expanded Communities initiative, and finally selected by a jury of leading producers in the space, will meet with brands, agencies and production companies. That strand, says Brooks, evolved from a session at last year’s Expo on branded storytelling illustrating how more and more traditional filmmakers are entering that world. “We had such great interest,” she says, “and the idea was to start with these ten storytellers to watch to see if there’s interest. And as other filmmakers got wind of it, they’re like, ‘How do I get into this section?’ It’s making us think about the future — does it expand into an open application section?’ We’re seeing a lot of brands that are interested in working with creatives not just from a commercial background but a filmmaking background because story has become increasingly important to them.”

Among the filmmakers featured in this section are B. Monet (Black Girls, Ballet after Dark), Ursula Liang (the True False-premiering Down a Dark Stairwell) and Amy Nicholson (Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride). 

A similar approach — using Expanding Communities partner organizations to provide recommendations — shaped the TV-focused Series Creators to Watch section, which, this year, connects ten rising series creators with projects in development to industry attendees. And what was formerly known as the No Borders section has changed to the Global Producers Hub, where producers, including US-based ones who participated in the Rotterdam Lab and Cannes Producers Network, will present their projects and engage in networking opportunities.

Among the other sections, Spotlight on Documentaries continues unchanged, presenting non-fiction works-in-progress to buyers, distributors, sales agents and production companies. Also returning is US Features in Development, which presents completed screenplays to industry representatives in one-on-one networking events.

Events like Project Market and Expo always stand in, somewhat, as referendums on the state of the industry, which, as many filmmakers will claim, is in a state of crisis. Here, say Brooks and Sharp, the organization of the event, which draws upon ground-level partners representing their own specific communities, provides necessary context. “There’s a continuity to the conversations because of the way the topics have been curated and selected through our partner organizations,” says Sharp. “So unlike a conference, which is just created for the moment, these are ongoing organic conversations year-round that are then are brought to the community at this level during Gotham Week. I think that allows people to engage in a more substantive meaningful way than “the sky is falling at the moment.” The Expo’s theme this year is “Pathways,” which speaks to, says Brooks, “all these changes and needs” of filmmakers. “Hopefully through the Expo we can provide tangible tools of how to navigate [career paths],” says Brooks. 

Finally, jury-selected awards will also be bestowed to single projects in the US Features in Development, US Shorts to Features, Spotlight on Documentaries, and to a “Global Producer of the Year.”